


Soldier/Ghost

by Miri1984



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Manpain, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, basically everyone who has ever had anything to do with cap will turn up eventually, because i am totally shameless, no smut though sorry, steve and bucky will love each other forever but probably never say anything, steve pile!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:04:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 39
Words: 46,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1427824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Buchanan Barnes doesn't remember who he is or even what he is, but he knows Steve, and he needs to find out why. Past/present/future fic, part Spitfire origin story, part post-Cap-2 feelsfest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Familiar

The arm needed maintenance. He knew that, he knew it in the way he knew a lot of things — programmed into him when they pushed him back into the chair. Targets ( _friends)_ and equipment and orders and missions and technology. 

The arm needed maintenance and he didn’t know how to do it. It was going to be a problem. He was capable of hiding (they taught him well) capable of feeding himself, blending in, it was all part of how useful he was. But he was not capable of this.

There had been drop points, areas where he could go for maintenance when he was in deep cover, but the first that he found had been destroyed. He didn’t know how, but he knew that _he_ had destroyed it. There were the earmarks of his work ( _why was it so familiar_ ) — no casualties, just efficient calm dispatch. Surgical strikes. 

There was no way he would know where all the points were. The Winter Soldier knew better than anyone how well hidden all the caches were, and even with Hydra in ruins there were contingency plans within contingency plans.

But standing in the rubble of the buildings, hands shoved deep in the pockets of the duffel he wore, he realised he would not seek them out. His feet were standing where _those_ boots had stood and there was a feeling in his chest that he couldn’t identify — he couldn’t identify any of the feelings but _this_ one was more akin to those he had felt (had he?) during missions. Satisfaction. Completion.

He was glad this cell was gone. He hoped the engineers had been killed. He hoped the hands that had pushed him down and stripped his memories were burnt and unrecognisable just like the place they had worked.

But of course, they wouldn’t be. They would be in custody. Captain America ( _Steve)_ would have made sure none of them died.

The hatred that surged was as unfamiliar as the other feeling he’d had — on the helicarrier. He didn’t know how it was possible for two feelings like that to coexist. He didn’t know if other people had those feelings all the time. How could they and not go mad? Split down the middle like so much meat.

_You’re my friend._

He didn’t feel it when he drove his fist so hard into the wall that it shattered. The whine of the metal gears reminded him why he was there. Flexing the fingers as he pulled it back. Automatically checking for damage. There was. Of course there was. And there was no one to fix it.

He pulled the hood of the duffel closer down over his face and hunched his shoulders against the chill wind. 

Time to be a ghost.


	2. You Need Me

Sam drove. His hands on the steering wheel had nicks and cuts from the fall he’d taken when Bucky clipped his wings, but they were well tended, and healing fast.

Not a super soldier, not by any stretch, but something that Steve needed a lot more than that right now.

“You think she’s going to turn up again?” he said, eyes flicking from side to side on the road. They hadn’t been followed to the cemetery — Natasha had made sure of that — but Steve and Sam were hardly stealthy at the best of times.

He missed her already. Nearly two years they’d been working together.

On different missions.

He winced. Tried to hide it with a smile. “Sure. Next time aliens invade maybe.”

“Gotta get me some new wings before that happens.”

“You going to suit up with us?”

“Hell, yeah! Reckon I could hold my own against Stark even. That guy was never trained.”

_Put on the suit._

“He could probably make you some new wings, Sam,” Steve said. “Pretty much the only person I know who could, actually. Whether he _would…”_ There’d been a report about Tony. Steve’s clearance hadn’t been high enough to access all the details but he did know that the Malibu house was gone — struck by a missile. He’d read the papers, felt an unexpected pang when they’d announced his death.

He needed not to trust reports of his friends’ deaths.

“I’m not counting the old ones out yet, Steve.” 

“Good for you.”

The trees slipped past as they drove. It was bright out there — leaves making patterns of shadow in the grass.

“You haven’t told me what’s in the file.”

He glanced back at the rear seat. He’d gone through it as quickly as he could, noted names that had the ring of familiarity about them. Madame Hydra. Baron Strucker. People he thought were dead.

People he remembered killing.

And the names of people he missed like fire. 

“Leads,” he said. 

“Is that why we’re going to England?”

“Yes. There’s someone I need to talk to.”

Peggy might remember some of it, but he wasn’t going back there, not right now. There were only so many wounds he could take in so little time, even with the serum.

Steve glanced over at Sam. “You’re sure you want to come.”

Sam’s lip twitched. “Cap I’m not leaving anything behind I can’t come back to. Besides this is part of my job.”

Steve cocked an eyebrow. “It’s a little more like active duty, Sam. I couldn’t ask you to go back into it before and I’m not going to now.”

Sam shook his head. “You don’t get it. You need what I can give you. Not the wings. Not the back up,” there was a small laugh there. “Definitely not the muscle.”

“Still aching from carrying me?”

Sam rolled a shoulder, smiling. Then he turned serious. “You need my training from VA, Steve.” Steve swallowed and looked out the window. “Well at least you’re not shouting me down and denying it.”

“The people back there need you too.”

“I wasn’t on my own, you know that as well as I do. And the other councillors — well they’d tell me to go with you if they could. You need help, and you need _my_ help because who else is gonna be able to keep up with you? You’re off on a quest to save a man I’m still not convinced can be saved and me? Well.” Sam shook his head, that smile creeping back up again. “I’m on a quest to save one that _can.”_

Steve looked at his hands. “You’ve got a lot of confidence, Sam.”

“I know I’m good.”

Steve laughed and shook his head, but he couldn’t lift it up to meet that gaze, not right now, and when he shut his eyes and took a breath that breath shook.

 _You’re my mission._  

Sam was still talking. “You need me because you’ve rolled it all up into him. You figure if you can save _him_ it means everything will be better for _you._ And I know you _know_ it doesn’t work that way, you’re not stupid, but knowing something isn’t the same as believing something and if we can’t save him I need to be there to make sure I can catch you from that particular fall.”

“He saved me — he pulled me out of the river — ”

“He’s a _kid_. He doesn’t know right from wrong. All he knows is you and he doesn’t know you as anything other than someone who hurt him.” Steve frowned. Sam jabbed a finger at him without taking his eyes off the road. “You hurt him. You know it. You made him feel again. You’re gonna go face him and there’s a fifty/fifty chance he doesn’t hesitate this time because killing _you_ will make those feelings go away.”

“Bucky would never — ”

“He’s _not_ your friend.”

Steve clenched his jaw. 

They pulled into Sam’s parking lot and Steve got out, not exactly slamming the door but definitely moving with a purpose. “Are you storming off Rogers?” Sam said.

He turned, folded his arms. Took a breath. “You weren’t there, Sam.”

Sam leaned on the top of the car and cocked an eyebrow at him. “No I wasn’t. But I can read between the lines and I was there when you woke up. The guy beat seven kinds of hell out of you if you were _anyone_ else you’d be dead and I know you well enough by now to know that you just lay there and took it. Forgive me if I have a strong urge to give a few back.”

“It isn’t his fault.”

“And this isn’t _your_ fault, you didn’t hold him down and make him into this.”

“If it wasn’t for me he would never have been — ”

“If it wasn’t for you he would be dead. More dead. I don’t know.”

Steve can remember the fear on his face, on Bucky’s face, when he was trying to free him. It wasn’t fear of death. It was fear of _life._

He refused to believe that anyone could ever be better off dead. In this case, though, it was hard. All those years lost, all that time in worse than ice. Steve could pull himself up and look at himself hard and _know_ that he was being selfish because it was possible that dead _could_ be better than what Bucky would have to live with when he saved him.

_Not without you._

He tried to give shape to the words. _If it comes to that._ He tried to say _I’ll know better when I see him._ He tried to make allowances for what Bucky would want but it hurt. Too much.

“I’m going to save him,” Steve said.

Sam shook his head. “I know, man. I know.” ****


	3. Old Ladies

“Jacqueline, you know you have to take your medication if you want to sleep properly. Being in pain does no one any good."

 

Jacqueline Falsworth was ninety four years of age, going on six thousand percent done with home nurses even if they did keep her alive. What were they keeping her alive for - that was the major question. "When you reach my age, Ness, you are painfully aware that every time you close your eyes there's a good chance you're never going to open them again - I for one want to be awake when he comes to collect."

“My Lady, you'll outlast us all."

Ness only used her title when she was lying.

"Is my layabout son here yet?"

Ness helped her sit more comfortably in the wheelchair. Jac could see the glass of whiskey she’d managed to pour herself before Ness had come up for her nightly nag just out of reach on the bedside table. 

"He rang to say he'd be here in time for supper.”

“Hand that to me, Ness, there’s a dear.”

Ness turned and picked up the glass, tutting. "You know you're not allowed to mix these with the trammel."

“I haven’t taken the trammel, Ness, you were just telling me that.”

Ness looked at her and put her fists on her hips. Jac eyed her. She was a home nurse, that was true, but she also had high level MI13 clearance, because no one could be trusted to look after the _lady_ (as they called her) for any length of time without one of her “damned incidents” as Pete put it.

Jac had had it up to _here_ with being told what to do for one day.

Her legs twitched.

Ness eyed them, stern expression not shifting.

“If you do _that_ you’ll need more than a glass of whiskey to help you sleep,” Ness said. 

“Wasn’t going to do anything,” Jac said, eyes narrowing.

“Tell that to a priest.”

Jac waved a hand. “Take the damned glass and give me the damned pill, woman.”

“I’m expecting Jim and some other guests tonight,” Jac said. 

“As well as Kenneth?”

“Yes. You can leave me be, they’ll deal with getting me to bed.”

“You’re sure?”

Ness wouldn’t be the type to leave her to her son’s care, much as she might like the man personally. Kenneth didn’t have a gentle touch with his mother, and Ness didn’t approve. Jac tried not to hold it against him. He was a grown man who had a life of his own, and it wasn’t as though they were short on money for the help that she found herself needing in her dotage. 

So she mentioned Jim, whom Ness had a soft spot for, and she felt on the edge of mentioning Steve and his new friend as well, but the spread of the newspaper over her lap — Steve’s face staring out of it looking as perfect and proud as it always had — made her change her mind. Ness needed her time off, and no doubt these days Steve needed peace and quiet and not some young girl fawning over him or asking for autographs.

She’d been that young girl, once.

“I know that television show you like is on, go on, leave an old woman to her privacy.”

Ness smiled. “Well, if you’re sure you’re comfortable.”

“Kenneth has his own key and you work too hard for a difficult old woman. Go.”

Ness squeezed her shoulder and left, leaving Jac looking out over the grounds of the manor. There were darkening clouds in the sky and the sun had nearly slipped past the horizon. She slept a little, dozing upright in her wheelchair. If she was honest that was how she got most of her sleep these days, looking out at the world and wondering why she was still in it. When she woke the sun had set and the faint light from the ancient wall fittings were barely enough to illuminate the newspaper that lay in her lap.

Kenneth was here, Standing in the doorway. She knew his silhouette better than her own.

Something was wrong.

“Mum, you really should stop moping at that newspaper and eat something.”

“I ate before you got here,” she said. “That’s what the nurses are for, Kenneth. Looking after me.”

He sighed. There was a lot wrong with that sound. The wrong cadences. Jac’s hands — frail and thin — tightened on the arms of her wheelchair, a sudden terrible knowledge settling in her chest. “Of course if you managed to get here before sunset sometimes we could occasionally share a meal together. But that would necessitate you actually eating.”

“Mum —“ 

“I’m not stupid, Kenneth.”

“I never said you were, mum.”

“I thought I’d raised you not to be either.”

He moved. The light was too dim for her to see him properly, but she didn’t need to, she didn’t need to understand why he moved so quickly and was next to her before she could react. Once. Not so long ago, she would have been fast enough to get out of his way, but she was old, so old now, and as she’d gotten older the abilities had taken more out of her until she was stuck in the wheelchair, bones fragile and overused.

She’d thought she’d stopped soon enough. 

“I can give it all back to you, mum,” he said softly.

She raised her face to him. The signs were all there. Her beautiful boy.

Even more beautiful now. But no longer hers. “Who was it?” she said. “Who did it to you, Ken?”

The dim lights glinted on white, sharp teeth. “Does it matter?”

“You were my son.”

“I _am_ your son.” She shook her head, gathering her strength. This was going to hurt. It was probably going to kill her. But she didn’t care.

For what she was sure would be the last time Jacqueline Falsworth-Crichton moved faster than the eye could see.

 

Sam whistled. “This lady has some serious money, Steve,” he said. It was late. Their flight had been delayed (no more SHIELD quintets for them, although Tony probably could have spared something, Steve didn’t like to ask) and it was dark outside Falsworth Manor. Jacqueline had always been something of a night-owl, although Steve wasn’t sure if that was still the case now that she was pushing ninety years old.

“Falsworth was old money, and she married old money,” Steve said. 

“The English are weird.”

Steve laughed. “Jackie,” he should his head. “Jackie was something else.”

They walked up the path. It was cold and misting with rain, and both men had their hoods up. Steve, used to cold like this, felt the weight of the history of the manor like a familiar cape around his shoulders. The building was older than he was, had stood here since long before he was born.

“Does she have a butler?”

Steve shook his head, smiling. “She has a home nurse, from what I could gather on the phone. She lives in. Jac said it would be fine to come this late.” He considered. “Given how late we were Jim is probably already here.”

Sam gave him a skeptical look. “You didn’t give me the full story on Jim. And why is everyone you know called James?”

Steve smiled, but his heart gave a painful thump. _It’s_ Bucky _kid, only my folks call me James._

“It’s still a pretty common name, Sam. So is Steven. And Sam for that matter.”

“Yeah well, I think you might have some sort of James magnet on you or something because…”

They reached the massive double wooden doors. Steve tilted his head, listening. They’d been in full view up the gravel driveway, yet there were no sounds coming from inside the house at all, and no one had come to meet them. Steve knew Jac lived mostly alone, but it seemed odd. He put a hand on the door, worried.

The door swung open. He swallowed. There was nothing but darkness beyond, but his vision was sharp enough to make out shapes. He reached into his duffel pocket and pulled out a flashlight, flicking it on and stepping forward into the manor.

The tiny light made everything worse, somehow. Shadows leapt at him out of the corner of his vision. The rain wasn’t hard enough to make any sound on the high gabled roof, and the thick carpet made even Sam’s tread difficult to hear. Steve held up a hand. “Watch the entrance, Sam.”

“The hell.”

“We don’t know what’s in here, or if it’s still here even.”

“Waaaait a second. It? Why are you saying it. What’s with _it?_ Do you know a lot of _its_ Steven Rogers? I didn’t sign up for this.”

“No, you signed up to help me. Right now —“ Steve shook his head, a bad feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. “Right now that help might be about to get strange.”

“Oh, like it wasn’t strange before.”

There was a crash. Steve didn’t think, just sprinted up the stairwell towards it. 

The sitting room was equipped with most things an elderly woman would need — a medical station, minimal furniture — Jac was in a wheelchair after all — and a table setting at wheelchair height for her to eat. Jac though, was sprawled on the ground, the wheelchair tipped over.

There was blood.

Steve’s heart sank. “Jackie?”

“Steve?”

Her voice was weak. He rushed to her side, worst fears confirmed when he saw the wounds on her neck. “Damn Jackie… Hold on.” He pulled out his phone. 

“Too late, Steve,” she said. “Kenneth.”

Her son. He’d read about him in the files.

The light in the room changed, subtly, and there was a sound that Steve hadn’t heard in seventy two years outside. “No it’s not,” he said, pressing a hand over hers, gently, while Sam scrambled to stop the bleeding. A streak of flame illuminated the grounds outside the window. “You weren’t the only one I was coming to see.”


	4. Sleep

The Winter Soldier was faced with the prospect of sleep.

There had been steps, before he slept, of course. A weapons cache to stake out before risking a raid. Clothing. Food, unfamiliar and tasteless in a mouth that could still feel the buzz of electric current from his most recent wipe. 

The steps weren’t important. 

Sleep had always been a necessity on longer missions. There were pills he took, before sleeping, that prevented dreams. 

For a ten hour mission they had not bothered to supply him, this time.

He had checked. 

A room, in a cheap motel that he had paid for in cash. He had killed people from rooms like this. The smell of sex and cigarettes a familiar enough backdrop to metal and gunpowder. 

Here though, there was no target.

There was a bathroom, tiny, cracked mirror which he did not look into, shower. He stared at it blankly for a few minutes, before remembering the cold clammy touch of the water _the feel of Roger’s wrist clamped in his metal hand — bones so fragile he could have crushed with a single clench of his fist._

_No._

_The wrist in his hand had felt wrong. It wasn’t the wrist of someone he had ever had to help. So why could he feel the fineness of bones under skin? Why could he remember being able to circle that wrist twice over with one hand, why could he remember the feel of flesh on flesh when there was nothing there but fabric and metal?_

He remembered the faint look of disgust on the face of the clerk as he had paid the fee for the room, plucked at the borrowed clothes covering his chest.

He didn’t know why it was so difficult to disrobe. Turn on the water. Get into the shower. Soap. Water. It took him some time to work out that the water did not have to be cold.

When it turned warm he closed his eyes and let it run over his face.

He did not leave until the water was cold again.

Out of the shower, faced with the clothes that still carried the stink of his skin, he found he could not put them back on. He filled the grimy tub, dropping the articles in with more of the cheap scented soap, flashes of some other time echoing in his skull. 

_Water, dripping down onto muddy streets. A woman’s voice chastising… chastising a boy for dropping a sheet into the mud. “Now I’ll have to wash it again, Steve.” His hand, scooping the cloth from the muddy street._

_“Don’t worry Mrs Rogers, I can do that for you.”_

_“Such a good boy, Bucky. Aren’t your folks missing you?”_

_A look, quick, furtive, to the skinny blond child next to the tub. A flash of white teeth in a smile. Toss the head. Charm her so she feels better. Make her go easier on him, on herself._

Protect _him._

He pulled the metal hand away from the bathtub, five perfect holes in the ceramic edge where he had gripped it too hard. Washed the clothes. Draped them over the shower rail to dry. 

Moved, naked, to the bed.

Sleep brought dreams.


	5. Lords and Ladies

 

_You should have gone back._

Ice within and without, darkness and silence but for the deep creaking of the ocean far beneath him. Time. So much time. 

_“Steve your boots smell like Mrs Olson’s stray cats.”_

_“Nothing to how yours used to smell, Bucky.”_

_“Hey I can’t believe you ever took me seriously when I asked you to shine them.”_

_“Give them here.”_

_Bucky danced out of reach. “No sir, you’re my commanding officer sir must keep the CO looking their best or…”_

_“Bucky don’t. I can shine my own boots for the love of —“_

_Bucky spat on the edge of his sleeve and made a show of rubbing at a mark on the boot in one hand. Steve rolled his eyes, lunging forward to grab the boot. Fast. So much faster._

_Bucky fell back on the ground, eyes wide, hands empty, staring at Steve. Hid the frown that started to form. Laughed._

_Steve held out the boot to him but Bucky shook his head “No, Steve, you’d do it better than me any way.”_

_Bucky fell._

A wall of white noise, he didn’t know if it was the train or the ice clutching at his skin and his mind, thoughts fractured, broken into shards that cut like knives.

_He was alive and you should have gone back._

 

***

 

The gentle hand on his shoulder was familiar enough that he moved towards it, a strange discord when the eyes looking into his were brown rather than blue.

“Cap. The doctor’s are saying your friend is awake.”

Steve sat up, shaking his head, attempting to clear the tendrils of the dream. “Where is she?”

“They’re saying we can’t go and see her,” Sam said. “They’re saying — “

“Captain Rogers?”

Steve looked up to see a dark haired man in a dark suit. He screamed “official” and Steve found himself thinking of Coulson.

“Sir?”

The man thrust out a hand. “Pete Wisdom, MI5. Jackie said you found her and got Jim to her?”

Steve nodded. “With Sam’s help, yes. Is she going to be all right?”

Wisdom’s eyebrow twitched. “In a matter of speaking. Although I’ve got a lot of things to clear up. It’s a good thing Falsworth Manor is in the middle of nowhere — insofar as it can be in this country. Hammond was under strict instructions never to put on the kind of display we saw last night, even on pain of death.”

“He’d never let anything bad happen to Jackie, Mr Wisdom. Sometimes you’ve got to do what’s necessary.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Can we see her?” Sam said. “I mean, that was why we were here.”

Wisdom frowned. “To be honest, Captain, Mr Wilson — “ Sam glanced at Steve, unsurprised that Wisdom knew his name, “I’m inclined to ask you to leave. Jackie’s one of ours and your recent activities at SHIELD make you something of a security risk.”

“I’ve never pretended to be anything I’m not, Mr Wisdom,” Steve said, squaring his shoulders. “I was just a little slower on the uptake than I would have liked.”

Wisdom shrugged. “She’s asking for you,” he said. “I guess that’s enough for me, but god help us if the Director gets wind of me letting you in.”

Steve’s lip twitched in an almost smile. “It’s hard to say no to her.”

“Even harder now,” Wisdom said, leading them into the hospital room. 

“How’s Jim?”

“Fine. He’ll take a while to recover, she’d lost a lot of blood. As for Jackie…”

Steve stopped in the doorway, faced with the smiling face of someone who had stepped straight out of his past. Her face was smooth and unlined, the hands that rested on the hospital linen those of a twenty-year old woman. 

“Captain Rogers,” she said, in a voice rich and vibrant with youth. “Who’s your handsome friend?”

 

***

 

The jeep rolled up the gravel path, the Commandos in the back getting soaked by freezing rain. It wasn’t exactly new for them, and the prospect of spending the night indoors was enough that they hadn’t lost their cheer. Bucky whistled as they approached the house, swarming with army personnel. Falsworth Manor had become headquarters for the Hydra pushback in England — far enough from the coast that they were safe from prying eyes.

“Were you ever going to tell us you had money, Falsworth?” Bucky said. “This is the last time I’m sporting you money for stogies you tight bastard.”

“I’m not exactly getting hampers delivered to me on the front lines, Sergeant,” Falsworth didn’t look at all discomforted as they approached. “My father thinks making me rough it builds character.”

“Seriously?” Dugan said. “Has he met you?”

“At the moment the fortune is tied up in the war effort, and my father likes to make a habit of cutting my allowance when times are tough to ‘show willing’”.

“Always more people with less than us, right Bucky?” Steve remembered his mother giving coins to beggars in the streets — coins that they could have used for food themselves. 

“Yeah Steve, but I think _everyone_ has less than Falsworth.”

Falsworth gave an easy shrug and a smile. “At the present time we’re ranked thirty-eighth amongst the peerage, Sergeant, a fact that causes my father some consternation of an evening.”

“Jimmy!” A woman’s voice interrupted their chatter. _Peggy_ Steve thought at first, but the head streaking towards them along the gravel path was blonde, and taller and slimmer than Peggy. She was dressed in combat fatigues though, sporting a revolver at her hip, that blond hair tightly braided down her back.

Falsworth gave the Commandos a warning look before vaulting over the side of the jeep. “Jackie!” The jeep rolled to a stop and the rest of the Commandos jumped down, Bucky smirking.

Steve coughed a little before Falsworth let the woman go and he turned smiling at them. “This is my sister, Jacqueline Falsworth,” he said. “Jackie this is…”

The woman thrust out a hand towards Steve, smiling one of the widest smiles he’d ever seen. “I know who he is Jimmy.” Steve hesitated a moment before taking her hand and shaking it firmly. 

“Steve Rogers, ma’am,” he said. 

She pulled her hand back and nodded at the other men. “Jimmy’s mentioned you in his letters. The ones we get to read, any way. If you’ll follow me, my father and General Austen are waiting.”

Gabe and Bucky nudged Falsworth in the ribs as they walked in.

“Falsworth you didn’t say your sister was a looker,” Gabe said.

“I was hoping she wouldn’t be here, actually.”

“You don’t trust us with your sister?”

“Not as far as I could conveniently spit them, no.”

“Is she single?” Bucky asked.

“Very. And will continue to be so as long as you are fifty feet within this building.”

Bucky waggled his eyebrows at Steve. “Does she dance?”

“Shut up Sergeant.”

Steve followed Bucky and Falsworth into the manor, chuckling.

 

Lord Falsworth was closeted with General Austen in what would probably originally have been a ballroom. Jackie Falsworth lead them through throngs of English men and women in uniform to a map in the centre of the room. Austen gave Steve a brisk salute and motioned for the Commandos to be shown outside.

Steve shook his head. “With all due respect, sir, these are my men. They need to be briefed just the same as I do.”

Austen frowned at Lord Falsworth. “This information is delicate, Captain.”

“General anything you say to me I’ll report to them. My men don’t go into a mission blind. It’s not the way we do things.”

Lord Falsworth gave Steve a look, then nodded to his son and daughter. “Your sergeant can stay with you. The rest of your men might benefit from some rest.”

“As you say, sir.” He nodded to Dugan and the Commandos filed out. He would brief them as soon as he could, and they knew that. Jacqueline turned her head to look at them as she left, smiling a little. Steve saw Bucky give her a wide smile and a wink back that brought a blush to her cheeks and he felt something tug at his chest — an echo of his friend from before that table in the Hydra base — one that he was seeing all too seldom these days.

Once they were gone Bucky and Steve settled around the table, the rest of the personnel filing out at the General’s order.

“Perhaps now you can tell me what all the secrecy is about, General?” Steve said.

“We have a problem, Captain,” the General said. “One that our enemies could all to easily use to their advantage.”

Steve glanced at Bucky and nodded. “Well sir, I’d be happy to help however I can.”

Lord Falsworth heaved a sigh and leaned forward. “Tell me, Captain Rogers, what do you know about _vampires?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 616 continuity Spitfire is Falsworth's daughter, she DOES however have a brother (who ends up being Union Jack, whom I think Falsworth in the MCU is meant to represent as he was not one of the original Commandos with Fury). Originally I'd intended Jackie to be Falsworth's daughter but he just doesn't look old enough to have a full grown child, hence I've tweaked this a little, and I like the dynamic between them as siblings a bit better in any case. This is a lot of me making up stuff, in case you hadn't already noticed!


	6. Evasion

The Winter Soldier awoke knowing he was being watched.

Mercifully his dreams had been all of recent events. While Rogers’ face had dominated (shifting between the one he remembered, beaten and bloody, to a younger, childlike face full of hope and earnestness) there had been no more flashes of memory.

Yet when he woke, he knew he had been found.

The room was silent. He dressed in clothes still damp, tucking his hair under a hood, avoiding the mirror. The bathroom window was too small to accommodate him, but the Winter Soldier had planned for this contingency.

One swift kick took the air conditioning unit out with minimal noise. There was no way they wouldn’t have heard it, but he was through the resulting hole and running before they could react. 

Of course they had the back window covered. He held up the metal arm, feeling the impact of bullets. They hit only the arm. Not shooting to kill, only to incapacitate.

They were not Rogers’ men. 

He ran faster.

The route had been planned in his head before he set foot in the lobby of the motel. Left, a hundred metres, right fifteen metres, right again, vault through the empty lot, run, dodge.

The sound of bullets stopped after five minutes, the sound of pursuit after ten. He paused behind a delivery van, in a part of the city that was achingly familiar. He walked to the diner he had earmarked. Ordered coffee in a voice harsh and rusty with disuse. Breathed. 

They’d wiped him, since the causeway. But wipes left echoes.

He should have realised that, when he chose the area, chose the hotel, should have recognised the patterns in his own mind that made him seek out the places where everything had started to fall apart. This area, _t_ _his place._ The city _reeked_ of him, of that ghost of Rogers that sat in his head, always out of reach, different and yet utterly and completely the same man he had tried so hard to kill.

He had to get out.

Training and instinct were too strong for him to move, even though every part of his body ached to be away. He forced himself to wait the designated period, checking for signs of pursuit at the correct intervals, while his mind screamed to go, leave, escape, reject.

He paid for the coffee. Stood. Walked outside, intending to head to the bus station. Washington knew him too well and he knew it in ways he should not and he needed the stink of Rogers out of his skin.

The shot in the back of his neck was a tranquilliser dart, the arms that gathered him close and prevented him from falling familiar like everything else in this damned city, the smell of leather in the car they pushed him into making him gag.

How could he have forgotten, mapping the route away, that the pathways put in his head were not his own. No matter if Rogers had flushed the biggest wasps out of the nest; too many remained to kill.


	7. Explanations

Steve was beginning to think they’d have to get Sam some of the painkillers they’d been feeding him back in DC after the Potomac. He sat in the hard visitor’s chair near the window of Jackie’s room with his head resting in his hands.

“So. Let me get this straight. Mrs Crichton here was one of the Commandos?”

Jackie shook her head. “I wasn’t ever attached to the Commandos per se, Mr Wilson, may I call you Sam? You have such a nice smile. We worked together for a while.” 

“Okay, so, you’ve been brought back to life again because you got a blood transfusion from this guy —“ Sam pointed at the man in the wheelchair on the other side of the room.

“Jim Hammond,” Steve said. Jim smiled and waved and Sam side eyed him. 

“… Who is an android. Like… a robot?”

“Not quite,” Jim said. “I’m synthetic, not metal and gears, if you get my meaning. A simulation of life.”

“He looks normal.”

“Far from it, I’m afraid,” Jim said. 

Sam blew air out his cheeks. “It doesn’t explain why the little old white haired lady we found on the floor is now a dead ringer for Charlize Theron.”

“Who?”

“They call it a mutation, Sam,” Jackie said. “Very rare, and unpredictable. Jim’s synthetic blood works for me because I have certain advantages when it comes to adaptation and acceptance. It does Jim no real harm, not like a regular person, and it has a rather unexpected side effect.”

“Did you know this would happen Jackie?” Steve asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Of course I didn’t,” she said. “If I’d known getting a transfusion from Jim would bring back the glory days don’t you think I would have done this years ago? Being old isn’t any fun. You should try it some day.”

“I’m still older than you.”

“Being asleep for seventy years doesn’t count.”

Steve’s heart ached to look at them both. “I wish they’d told me,” he said softly.

Jim gave a weak laugh. “Steve I’m barely allowed to talk to the people at the local store, let alone make unsecured calls across the country. In any case we didn’t even know you were alive until New York.” Jim looked across at Jackie, and he shook his head. 

Pete Wisdom had deposited them all in a patient lounge. Steve had pulled out a handy device Natasha had given him before she left, and swept the room for bugs. Jackie, who’d taken time to pull on her clothes (although she’d made a face at the twinset and sensible shoes and muttered about going shopping as soon as possible) was sitting next to Jim Hammond, the android, who was in a wheelchair, looking a little pale from the amount of synthetic blood he’d lost.

“I guess you’re wondering if anyone from the forties is really dead now, huh,” Sam said, smiling to take the sting out of the words.

“Something like that,” Steve said. 

“You said on the phone that you had something to ask us, Steve,” Jim said. “Is it about what happened in Washington?”

Steve had sorted through the files Natasha had given him in a little more detail on the flight, and he pulled the relevant pages out to show to Jackie. She held the page with Bucky’s face — masked of course — frowning slightly at it. “I know him.”

Steve swallowed. “Yes. That’s why I wanted to see you Jackie. The file said… The files said you had an encounter with the Winter Soldier, in 1977?”

Jackie looked over at Jim, who leaned forward in his wheelchair. “That was a long time ago Steve,” he said. 

Steve shrugged. “Time is getting to be a little relative, don’t you think?”

Jackie’s eyes were rapidly going through the file. “Is this the person you talked about? The one who tried to kill you and Nick Fury?”

Steve nodded. 

Jackie frowned at the picture again. “He came after us nearly forty years ago, Steve. You’re _sure_ it’s the same man? They probably had different people wearing the uniform,  you know they tried that with Brian and with —“

“Jac. It’s the same guy. I know it is.”

“How?”

_You’re my friend._

“I saw him without the mask. I recognised him.”

Jac looked surprised at that and Jim moved forward in his wheelchair. “From the war?”

“It’s Bucky,” Steve said simply. “He survived the fall. They took him. Brainwashed him. Made him into _that.”_

Jac’s face fell. “Dear god, Steve,” she said. “Are you _certain?”_

Steve looked at Sam. “There’s a reason I’m still alive,” he said. “We fought. He tried to stop me from sabotaging the helicarriers.” He spread his hands, remembering the look on Bucky’s face as he’d fallen, the vehement denials, the feel of metal on skin. “He couldn’t do it.”

“Christ on a biscuit,” Jim said. “Well if he _is_ Bucky that makes a lot of things a damned sight clearer than they were in 1977.”

Jac was biting her lip, looking the photograph in the files again, one finger lightly touching Bucky’s face where the mask covered it. “You poor sod,” she whispered.

“Jac I need you to tell me exactly what happened in 1977. The file is frustratingly brief. I can’t — ask Peggy. She’s fading and she gets the details confused. But you were there too, and so was Jim, and I need to find him Jac, before Hydra does. I need to save him.”

Jackie looked at Jim again, then handed the page back to Steve. “There really isn’t that much to tell, Steve.”

“We’ll give you everything we can, especially if it means we can help Bucky,” Jim said. “But Steve — after what happened last night — “

“No one’s bothered to tell me what happened last night yet,” Sam said. “I mean, I can leave the room if you think I’m too young to know — “

“My son is a vampire,” Jac said bluntly. “He wanted to turn me, and I said no. That rather upset him, I’m afraid.”

Sam looked at them all for a long moment, then shook his head and stood up. “Okay. I’m out. You guys have your little heart to heart, Steve, when you want me to fly at someone or shoot ‘em or pull you out of a damned river come find me.”

Steve shook his head, holding out a hand and touching Sam’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sam. This is a lot for you to take in and I probably should have briefed you before.”

Sam looked at him, then back at Jackie. “She’s telling the truth?”

“I think we have to consider the possibility that all this is connected, Steve,” Jac said. “Hydra was neck deep in this back in 1943, and now you’re saying Bucky was Hydra too. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“You think your son’s attack last night was sparked because of what happened in Washington?”

“Damned strange coincidence, him showing up all vampiric the night you were scheduled to fly in and see me.” Jackie’s voice caught.

“Is there…?” _any hope for him._

“I don’t know. I don’t know how long he’s been turned. If he’s killed already it’s too late. If I’d died last night it would have killed him too.”

“Steve?” There was a warning note in Sam’s voice and Steve squeezed his arm. 

“I’m sorry, I’ve brought Sam in here in the middle of a story that he’ll need to know.”

“We’ve got time to share it,” Jac said softly. “And it might do you good, Steve.”

“You think?”

“To talk about the past,” Jim said. “You didn’t know about us. Most of the Commandos are dead. At least all this time Jac and I have had each other.”

Steve moved to the window, resting his hands on the sill and looking down at the hospital grounds. The rain from last night had cleared and the day was bright and beautiful. Bucky was out there, somewhere, lost and alone. “The past seems to be coming back to life all around me,” Steve said wearily. “But Sam deserves to know before we go any further.”

“Damn right,” Sam said. “Tell me everything.”


	8. Darkness

In the shadows of the old church graveyard, Bucky was building a miniature fireplace out of twigs. “So you’re saying she’s single, but she’s not allowed to step out with me because I’m not some fancy titled limey,” he said.

“No, James,” Falsworth had a pair of Stark’s night vision goggles, but Bucky didn’t need them — not on a night like this when lights from the village were reflecting back off the cloud cover. He’d been able to see better since the Hydra base, something he’d failed to mention in reports, just like he’d failed to mention any of the other things he’d noticed since then. “I’m saying she’s not allowed to… do anything with you because she’s my sister, and I’ve seen how you behave around women.”

“Hey you’re not being very respectful of her choices, I’m just saying. She seems like a smart girl you should let her make that decision for herself.”

“Sergeant I’m not trusting any woman to resist the lure of that damned cheeky smile of yours.”

“Oh so _now_ we see the real reason you’re keeping me away!”

It was easy to hide it, in the shadow of Steve. He couldn’t run as fast or as far, he couldn’t punch as hard or see as well, and the only person who might have noticed it, the only person who knew him well enough to know that he was better than he had ever been? 

Well Steve had always thought he was better than he was. 

It felt wrong, to be better now. It felt like what they’d done to him on the table was somehow _worth_ it, and while he didn’t want to give it up he also wanted more than anything for it never to have happened.

“Your levels of self delusion continue to astonish me, Barnes,” Falsworth said. He activated the fancy radio Stark had developed for them to report in. “Station one reporting no movement, Captain.”

Steve’s voice crackled back in their ears. “Acknowledged.”

“You buy this stuff about vampires?” Bucky said. 

Falsworth shrugged. “My father isn’t superstitious as a rule,” Falsworth said. “And we already know that Hydra and Schmidt will exploit any cockameenie thing if they think it’ll get them more power.”

“Maybe they’re some sort of experiment.” Bucky’s mouth went dry on the last word and he swallowed. 

“Like Austria?” Falsworth said. In the dimness Bucky couldn’t guess at the englishman’s expression.

“Yeah.”

Zola had bathed him in the light from the cube. Injected him with drugs that ran like fire through his veins. Stripped him bare and left him to rot with the other test subjects for days at a time.

They’d died.

Bucky hadn’t.

He rubbed at his arms, suddenly colder than he should be in the damp night air. 

Falsworth was silent. He’d never seen the bodies, none of the Commandos had. All he’d known was that people went to the isolation ward and didn’t come back.

Except for Bucky.

“Jimmy, I’ve got movement in the third quadrant.”

“Copy Morita.”

Bucky scanned the graveyard and caught the movement Morita had been talking about. He motioned to Falsworth, who circled around the other way. “Any idea what we’re dealing with Pat?”

“Barnes something is climbing out of a damned grave, so yeah. I’m guessing it’s vampires or some _really_ big moles. They don’t have bears here do they?”

“Where’s Steve?”

“I’m in position, Buck. Don’t engage if it looks bad. Run.”

Bucky skidded to a stop in the English mud behind a tall stone, looking around at the grave in question. “Define bad, Steve.”

“What have you got?”

“I think we’ve found a vampire.”

“Okay. I’m heading your way. Stick to the plan and stay solid.”

“Yeah well, I read the book, don’t they have a good sense of smell or something? I don’t fancy being supper.”

“The way you smell you will be perfectly _fine,”_ Falsworth muttered, from behind the next gravestone over. Steve was still talking, but the huff in his breath told Bucky he’d started to run towards them.

“Lord Falsworth said they were being drawn to the town somehow. We’re not trying to kill them, Buck, we’re trying to find out what Hydra wants them for.”

A hand burst through the earth. Bucky wondered why he didn’t feel the need to run. This was the stuff of nightmares, horror flicks they’d scrounged pennies to see after Steve’s mom died, vampires and zombies and monsters to make the girls scream.

His nightmares were about different things these days.

“We’re going to kill them _after,_ though, right Steve?”

The grave opened up with remarkable efficiency, the man — it had been a man — smoothing the ground behind him so the grave looked barely disturbed. He moved swiftly _away_ from Bucky and Falsworth, which gave Bucky a brief moment of relief, until he realised that meant it was going towards Steve. 

“Steve, coming your way.”

“Copy that. I’m taking cover.” In the distance Bucky could make out other shapes also moving in the same direction, and one single shape vaulting into a tree with the ease of a panther.

“Looks like we’ve got a congregation of the damned,” Falsworth said. “They’re heading east past the manor. Captain, you’re up.”

“Got them,” Steve said. There was a timeless interval while they waited for the vampires to pass him, then he dropped silently to the ground and started off in pursuit.

There wasn’t any of them could move as swiftly or as silently as Steve, but Bucky had spent the last year learning how he moved, his eyes constantly searching him out amongst the other soldiers, shadowing. Falsworth didn’t even blink when Bucky left him, even though their brief had been to wait for Steve’s word. They didn’t talk about it. The Commandos knew his brief, knew what he was there for. Stay with the Captain. Make sure you do what he can’t. Keep him safe. It was a tacit agreement, an order behind the order that Steve was only subconsciously aware of. Easy, because Steve wanted him there. Easy, because whenever Steve was out of sight Bucky could still feel the straps of the table and _know_ he was never going to be free.

There were four of the vampires. In the dim light Bucky thought one was a woman, but they all moved with remarkable speed. Steve kept downwind of them (good warning about the sense of smell) but kept up well enough. Bucky had to push himself and he knew he wasn’t as quiet as he could be, but the vampires weren’t focusing on anything but their destination.

They jogged for about four miles, Steve never showing signs of fatigue. Bucky made sure to breathe heavily and lean on his knees for a moment once he caught up with him, looking over a slight rise in the fields to see the entrance to what was almost certainly an underground bunker.

Steve didn’t seem too surprised to see him. “You should have stayed with the others, Buck.”

“You’d only screw this up if I left you alone,” Bucky said lightly.

Steve didn’t waste time arguing. “We’re off Falsworth land here. ‘Bout a mile and a half I’d say. The entrance to the bunker was covered over before they got here — that’s why Austen’s men haven’t been able to find it in daylight, but the vampires cleared it in a few seconds.”

“What are they _doing_ in there?”

Steve gave Bucky a lopsided grin and settled his helmet over his head. “Well what say we go find out?”

He’d been like this since the serum. Hell, he’d always been like this if Bucky was honest, ready to jump in with his fists before the other guy had finished talking, just back in Brooklyn it’d been easier to chase the bullies off and bandage Steve’s cuts and tell him he was being a punk and not to make him _worry so damned much all the time._

“I don’t like this, Steve,” he said. “Those things crawled out of _graves.”_

“And they’ve been terrorising the village for weeks and Lord Falsworth and General Austen called us in specifically to deal with it.”

“Yeah, and why did they do that do you think?”

Steve hesitated. “What are you saying, Buck?”

He didn’t know. He just knew he wasn’t inclined to trust any of them. 

Hadn’t been, since Austria.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

Steve smiled again, clapped a hand on his shoulder briefly. “Of course.”

Bucky couldn’t flinch from that smile. He couldn’t and he wouldn’t.

Steve looked away and Bucky shut his eyes, listening to him report in. “Morita we’re scoping a bunker at AR three nine eight seven, set up a perimeter and radio back to base. Let the General know we’ve found where they were going.”

“Roger, Captain.”

Steve nodded at Bucky. “You ready?”

Bucky sucked in a deep breath, mouth dry. “Sure. Let’s do this.”


	9. Light

The tranquilliser doesn’t work on him the way it should, he knows it from using it on targets ( _victims)_ himself. For them, they sleep, immediately, for The Winter Soldier, it’s simply like being disconnected from his own body. He knows where he is, but he loses the will to move unless prompted. He can walk, if they direct him, but lacks the capacity to choose his own way.

He hates it.

They drive for several miles outside the city. The Winter Soldier holds a map of it in his head, the way he has been trained. He could find his way back to the Causeway blindfolded, if only he could fight hard enough against the drugs in his system. Instead, he sits, passive, between two handlers.

They are nervous. He knows this even without being able to turn and look at them. Their bodies give off heat and moisture, the beat of their hearts in their chests runs in staccato rhythm against his own steady thud — slower by an order of magnitude. Only Rogers’ heartbeat had been as slow as his. He had felt it, pressed against him on the helicarrier, despite all the wounds and the fighting. A slow, familiar thump of blood under skin, matching his own.

They pull into an abandoned warehouse just beyond a neighbourhood of apartments that could only charitably be called a slum. They lead him out of the car, and inside. This place is _not_ in the Winter Soldier’s memory. It was not in the files they released to the public.

Which is one of the reasons he reacts so strongly to the room.

It was the same. They had the chair. The bars. The machines. 

Once, this had been home. Once, the chair had meant a new mission, and a new purpose, and pain, yes, always pain, but the pain had given him a focus to work towards.

Now he feels his skin attempt to crawl away from contact with it even as his body willingly folds into position.

They do not strap him down. They know how long the drugs last.

What they don’t know is that before now, The Winter Soldier has never had a better reason to fight against it. Why bother when all you know is this? 

There are questions.

“Why didn’t you complete your mission?”

 _People are gonna die Buck. I can’t let that happen._ He concentrates. Manages to move a finger on his flesh arm.

“I failed. Rogers was too strong.”

“Why didn’t you report in?”

 _You’re my friend._ Muscles start to respond.

“I tried. Initial meet point was destroyed. Rogers got there first.”

“There are other meet points.”

_Then finish it._

“Calculated the risk too great.”

“Why did you run when we found you.”

He pauses, gathering the remnants of his strength and his will. The drug is still in his system, but he can fight it. If he exerts himself, his blood will pump the toxin out of him, just like it does for Rogers _laughter and reluctance, a line of empty glasses, Morita’s money on the table making another bet, “There’s no point Bucky you know that I can’t get drunk any more!”_

It is only when the machines are smashed and the last scientist cowers in the corner that he stops. There is blood. He kills quickly, and efficiently, but there is always blood. They had no time to call for reinforcements, but The Winter Soldier knows there are cameras watching. He has minutes, seconds probably, before they will be back, with a higher dose of the tranquillisers, with restraints that are capable of holding him in place, with men they will not care if he kills.

The metal arm whirrs as he clamps its fingers around the final scientist’s neck. “How did they find me?”

“They’ll kill me.”

He squeezes. “So will I. But first you will tell me.”

The man pisses himself in fear, babbling. The Winter Soldier slams him against the wall. “How.”

“Your arm. Tracking device.”

He slams him again. “How do I disable it.”

“Had to fix it. After the first mission to kill Rogers. Don’t know why.”

The woman. She had used something on his arm. 

The wipe had been faulty, too far from cryo, mid-mission. They’d had to program him with things that were too close to the surface. He could remember the fight. Remember the feel of the woman on his back. 

_He could remember her face._

The Winter Soldier nods. He kills the man cleanly, breaking his neck with the arm that is his nemesis. There is the sound of booted feet in the corridor. The Winter Soldier assesses exits.

He chooses the one that means the most deaths.


	10. Victims

The two guards at the entrance to the bunker were easily dispatched. Steve choked one down and Bucky dispatched the other with a swift left hook. Opening the bunker doors was more difficult, but a careful application of the shield to the relevant points, with Bucky using brute strength to pry them apart, managed it without too much noise. Hopefully whatever the vampires were doing inside was riveting enough for them that they would not pay attention to a few clangs and creaks.

The bunker lead down, underground, electric lamps spaced at distances a little too far apart to give adequate light. Steve motioned Bucky to stick behind him as they descended. There were no doors or branches in the corridor, and as they got deeper there was a sense of heaviness in the air, and an unmistakable smell.

“Steve,” Bucky said, warning.

Steve nodded tightly. “I know Buck.”

The double doors at the bottom of the corridor conveniently had windows. They didn’t need to look for very long to see what was going on behind them.

Four vampires, each with a victim conveniently positioned near the cots they were strapped to. They were drinking from the victims, while machines in turn sucked blood from them. One of the vampires finished with a victim and through her to the floor with a snarl, demanding another.

It was clear there were many more to be had, as a hydra soldier shoved another — a middle aged man — within reach.

There were seven corpses piled on the floor of the lab already.

“Steve,” Bucky’s stomach was turning, but there was no way his warning was going to get through to Steve here. There were lives in danger, and that meant one thing.

“Cover me, Bucky.”

_“Steve.”_

Steve went in blazing, gun first, then shield, lashing out at machines and hydra and vampires all at once. It was up to Bucky, behind him, to pick off the stragglers, wave at the victims to run, _go get out of here._ He radioed Morita to expect civilians, as he aimed and fired. It was close quarters, a nightmare for a sniper, but he remembered the back alleys of Brooklyn and prize fights for cash and weighed in with fists and head and feet like he was seventeen years old again.

He’d always known how to fight.

The vampires took a moment to react, in the midst of their feeding frenzy, and by the time they were awake and alert, the final Hydra soldier took a bullet to the gut from Steve’s gun.

There were four of them, and Bucky really did read the novel, once, back in high school, to impress a girl and because Steve said it was good, and he remembered that they were supposed to be fast, and strong, and part of him was half afraid there was a chance that they’d turn into bats.

“Steve the civilians are clear!” he needed Steve to know that, because he had a feeling this was going to turn south pretty quickly and the only way to make sure Steve looked after himself was to make sure he knew there was no one left to save. 

Steve leapt onto one vampire and pinned down underneath his shield, two of the others jumped onto Steve’s back. Bucky shot at them, but his rifle was snatched out of his hand and he was thrown against a wall by the fourth vampire, who advanced towards him as though he had all the time in the world. Bucky activated his radio. “Dugan, we need firepower down here!” and then launched himself past the vampire approaching him, wrapping his arms around one of the vampires attempting to pry Steve off their fellow. Steve, in the meantime, had the shield underneath the prone vampire’s chin, and was trying to force it downwards. 

There was a sickening crunch, and they all lurched into a pile, snapping and snarling. One vampire was significantly lacking a head, and the edge of Steve’s shield was dripping blood.

There were three left.

Bucky and Steve rolled to other sides of the room and to their feet almost simultaneously. The vampires stood eerily still, looking at them and at the corpse of their fellow on the floor. It was rapidly decaying as they watched, giving off such a foul smell that Bucky nearly gagged. 

Bucky’s radio crackled. “Firesupport incoming, boys,” Dugan said. Steve glanced at Bucky, then at the vampires. He had scratches down his face and the back of his neck, was breathing hard, and there was no way the two of them even together could last against three for any length of time. Steve nodded, once, and they both made for the doors.

The vampires snarled and gave chase. Bucky detached a grenade from his belt and threw it behind them, Steve, working in perfect tandem, moved to cover them with the shield as the explosion rocketed them forwards and upwards. They landed running, near the doors, where Dugan stood with a detonator. 

He’d had time to plant the explosives, and when Bucky and Steve were clear, gave his characteristic whoop of joy as the English night sky was lit up like Christmas.

The bunker collapsed in on itself, the vampires inside dead, Bucky hoped, or at least, not likely to rise again tonight.

Bucky and Steve collapsed in the mud a few hundred metres past the ruins of the bunker. Bucky was singed, but whole, but Steve was bleeding from his neck. “Jesus Steve are you bitten?”

Steve shook his head. “Bullet. One of the soldiers got me right as we came in.”

“Let me have a look — “ it was automatic — the number of times he’d had to patch him up in the past, but Steve just shrugged and tilted his neck. Bucky could see the graze, but the blood had slowed to a steep and he swore he could see the flesh moving to knit back together as he _watched…_

“I’ll be fine, Buck,” Steve said, getting to his feet. He held out a hand to help Bucky up as well, and Bucky only hesitated a fraction before taking it. “You?”

“Hell I’m peachy,” Bucky said with forced cheer, then turned back to the bunker. “Gotta hope those things aren’t immune to fire.”

“If folklore is anything to go by that should have done for them,” Steve said. “Whether they’re the only ones is another issue.”

“What happened to the civilians?” Bucky asked Dugan.

“Gabe and Morita are leading them back to the manor. They’re pretty beat up, two of them have lost a lot of blood.”

Steve looked pensive. “They were using them for something,” he said. “Taking their blood.”

“Well, yeah!” Dugan said. “That’s their MO, right?”

Steve shook his head. “Not the civilians. The vampires. They were draining them.” He heaved a sigh. “More of Schmidt’s science. Trying to control things he doesn’t understand.”

“Do _we_ understand it?”

Steve frowned. “Let’s get back to the manor. I want to ask those folks a few questions.”


	11. Friends

She lives in a secure apartment on the edge of Washington. The Winter Soldier has all of her information on call in his mind. It had been unlikely that she would have returned there, after the incident with Zola, but Hydra was nothing if not thorough when they prepped him.

He had felt no echoes, when he first saw her on the Causeway. She had been marked as the greater threat, an unknown despite the footage they had of her during the New York invasion. Adaptable. Slippery.

Now, however, having gone more than three weeks without a wipe or cryosleep, the Winter Soldier feels like he should know more about her.

He drops lightly into the apartment. It is simple enough, sparsely furnished in a modern style. He can imagine her being comfortable here. He scans the walls and the floors, looking for hidden safes. She would not keep her weapons in the open, she is not that kind of killer.

That she _is_ a killer is common knowledge, now. 

He knows it though, more than he should. There is a scent in the air that he remembers from the causeway — her scent — and it tugs at the same place in his memory where Rogers’ face resides, a place he is trying very hard to ignore.

He finds the picture he needs, a landscape, Moscow in winter. A classical painting, the only piece out of its time. He reaches up with the metal arm to take it down.

“I don’t think Nat would like it if you messed with her stuff.”

He turns. There is an arrow nocked and pointed straight at his eye. The man behind it is very willing to kill.

“Hi,” the man says. “I know who you are. I don’t want to put an arrow through your eyes because I’m thinking Cap wouldn’t be very happy about that, but you know, if you try to kill me I’ll try to kill you back. Fair’s fair.”

“You’re the Hawk,” The Winter Soldier says.

“I prefer Hawkeye,” the man says, shrugging a little. “My friends call me Clint,” a slight pause, a quirk of lips. “In case you were wondering, no, you’re not my friend.”

“I am not here to kill.”

“Oh? That’s a switch.”

“The woman. She has weapons that I need.”

“Nat’s not big on sharing. Especially when it comes to guns.”

“Not the guns.”

The man looks him up and down. “Yeah, you’ve got a lot of those already.” The man has a keen stare, and does not break eye contact with him for a long moment. 

Then Hawkeye lowers the bow and slides the arrow back into the quiver. The Winter Soldier frowns, confused. He should be arming himself. He should be killing the man and taking what he needs, but he doesn’t.

“You know I read what they did to you,” the man says conversationally, going to the picture and taking it down. There is a large safe behind it. The man keys in a combination and it opens, spreading out to reveal a large array of weaponry. The Winter Soldier can see the items he needs — the small round electric charges — he could take them and knock out the man, leave him here for Hydra to find — “I’ve got a lot of empathy. It’s no fun, having your brain messed with.”

Hawkeye steps back, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “The Captain is my friend. And he’s Nat’s friend.” He shrugs. “He’s pretty much everyone’s friend, really, in case you haven’t realised that. _Even yours._ ” Hawkeye makes a gesture towards the weapons. “Take them. Nat will moan about it but she’d want you to be safe. For him.”

_Rogers._

The Winter Soldier moves forward and takes the belt that contains the charges. He detaches one, examining it with trained eyes, then nods, activating it and slapping it onto the arm.

The jolt that goes through him staggers him back away from Hawkeye, who looks astonished.

“Hey, Steve wouldn’t want you to _hurt_ yourself — ”

The Winter Soldier shudders, then swings the arm, jolting it back into function. It is clunky and he can feel gears grinding against each other. There is field maintenance he can do, but the essential problem has not gone away. At least now, though, they cannot track him. He turns to the window. Hesitates. Looks back at the man.

“Hydra will be here,” he says. “Soon.”

Hawkeye’s shoulders slump. “Aww _bro.”_

“They will not hesitate to kill you to find out where I have gone.”

Hawkeye shakes his head and waves a hand, telling him to go. “It’s a good thing I don’t know where you’re going then, isn’t it?”

The Winter Soldier tilts his head. Then vaults out the window. 

Behind him, he can hear Hawkeye muttering. “Nat’s gonna _kill_ me.”


	12. Synthetic

Back at the manor Bucky and Steve and the other commandos went to the makeshift medical tent, surprised to find Jacqueline Falsworth there, tending the wounded. 

“I didn’t know you were a field nurse, Miss Falsworth,” Steve said, as she examined his scratches.

She sighed. “I’m not. Not really. I was in the resistance, in France, until my father managed to extract me. Crack shot, I did a lot of sniping actually.” Her eyes slid to Bucky’s and twinkled a little. “When father found out about it he was a tiny bit bloody furious.”

“How did you get back home?”

“Father called in a favour with General Austen,” she said shortly. “One of his units _convinced_ my cell that I would be better serving back home.”

“I dunno why all these dames wanna serve on the front lines,” Bucky said, almost to himself. Jacqueline’s eyes flashed as she turned to him, shoving his head roughly to look at where he was singed on the back of his neck. 

“Some of us are _good_ at it,” she said. 

“Easy, Bucky,” Steve said. “You’ve seen Agent Carter in action, you know as well as I do — “

Bucky held up his hands. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t be allowed!” he said. “I’m not an idiot. I’m just sayin —“ _if you have the chance not to why would anyone not take it._

He bit back the words, shoulders slumping. Steve didn’t understand that line of reasoning, and Jacqueline was obviously cut from the same cloth. He wondered, briefly, what it might have been like if Agent Carter had been the one to end up in that machine of Stark’s. Could it even work on a woman? Had they even considered it? Steve probably would have. Despite the fact that no dame had ever looked at him twice before the serum, he’d always had a crazy notion that women could do anything if they wanted to.

Bucky knew where Steve got it from. Sarah Rogers had been twice the man Ian Rogers had, by all accounts, even if Steve had never heard his full story. Bucky’s parents had talked in hushed voices about how they were better off without him, and it was Sarah who had filled Steve’s head with the notion that he was more than his illnesses.

Bucky knew why she’d done it. Could love her for it even, considering. God knew she had been more interested in Steve than Bucky’s mom had ever been in him.

“It’ll take time, Sergeant,” Jacqueline said as she spread some sort of soothing ointment over the tender skin at his neck — she had warm hands and a firm grip. “But eventually the world will understand what we’ve known all along.”

“What’s that Miss Falsworth?” Steve asked.

She gave him that dazzling grin. “That we can do everything you can do, Captain,” she said. Then she looked him up and down. “Well. Everything that the Sergeant here can, any way.”

She glanced back at Bucky and gave him a look that was decidedly more saucy than the awed look she’d given Steve, and Bucky allowed himself a small wink back. Steve was someone to aspire to. Bucky, though? He was _available_. 

After they’d been suitably patched up and been debriefed, Jacqueline lead them into the basement of the Manor. “We have a small science division here,” she said. “Lead by Dr Horton.”

“Horton?” Steve said. 

“Phinneas Horton,” Jacqueline said. “He’s on loan from the United States — I believe your friend Mr Stark has worked with him before?” 

“I remember,” Steve said.

“You’ve met?”

Steve shook his head, laughing a little. “Not exactly. Uh. Bucky and I went to Stark’s expo, you remember, Buck?”

“Yeah you weren’t exactly paying attention to the exhibits, buddy.” _Or your date for that matter._

Steve shrugged. “I remember this one. He was working on a synthetic man, wasn’t he?”

Jackie smiled knowingly. “Jim. Yes.”

Bucky blinked. “Wait, what?”

“It was a public fair, Sergeant Barnes, Dr Horton couldn’t let everyone know he’d succeeded in his project. I don’t think the world is ready for synthetic humans.”

“You’re telling me that thing we saw at the fair…”

“Jim wasn’t the model, no, poor dear would have hated being left in a glass case like that for hours at a time. Jim was created a few years earlier. There were a few complications which was why Dr Horton has never gone public with his success. Now, Jim works as Dr Horton’s assistant.” Jackie pushed open the double doors of the basement. “Although I’m not exactly sure that’s what he wants to do forever. He has a lot of other talents.”

The basement looked similar to Stark’s workshop back in Brooklyn. Bucky had only been there once, to be fitted with his current uniform (apparently a lot of thought had gone into making him look like an appropriate sidekick for Cap, but Bucky was grateful that they’d at least let him skip the mask they drew him in for the comics). A small man with wispy red hair, a moustache to rival Dugan’s and thick, round rimmed glasses was working over a bench, beside him a tall, slender man was writing in a notebook.

“So where’s the android?” Bucky said. The blond man turned and smiled at him.

“Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers, this is Jim Hammond,” Jackie said. Hammond thrust out a hand to shake Bucky’s and he hesitated a moment before taking it. It felt like a normal hand, if a little smoother.

“You… ah.. Don’t look any different.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Dr Horton didn’t look up from his vials as he spoke. “There would be no point in making a synthesised human who could not _pass_ for human.” He looked up and gave them a smile. “Although I think my work was outstripped by that of Dr Erskine. A pleasure to meet you, Captain.”

Steve frowned and Bucky found himself bristling. There was nothing s _ynthetic_ about Steve Rogers. “Dr Horton,” Steve said, nodding.

The doctor stood upright. “Lady Jacqueline, if you wouldn’t mind? I believe the General wanted me to discuss some things with these gentlemen privately.”

Jacqueline nodded. “I should check on the wounded.”

She turned to leave, and Bucky didn’t fail to see the way Hammond’s eyes followed her as she did. 

_Looks like he’s got all the proper parts, synthetic or not._

“Lady Jacqueline told me you found our vampires,” Horton said.

Steve nodded. “They were being experimented on, I think,” he said. Horton raised an eyebrow. “Willingly,” Steve continued, his mouth twisting in disgust. “Hydra had a steady supply of victims ready for them. I’m assuming they were the missing villagers.”

“Actually no, not entirely.” Horton said, taking a cloth from behind him and wiping his fingers fastidiously. “Some of the men and women you brought back from the bunker were Hydra, according to the General. Volunteers.”

Bucky’s heart thumped. “What. They were doing that _willingly?”_

Horton nodded. “From what General Austen could gather. Apparently Hydra wanted to attempt to create their own vampires — the four you killed in the bunker had risen from the graves of known collaborators.”

“But they were _dying,”_ Bucky said. “Cap you saw. The vampires were _killing_ them.”

“From what I understand,” Hammond said. “That’s a necessary step in the process.” 

Bucky shuddered. “You mean Hydra were going to bury those guys and…”

“…They would rise from the dead, yes.” Horton shrugged. 

“You don’t seem very bothered by the prospect, Doctor,” Steve said. Horton shrugged. 

“From what I understand you and your sergeant managed to burn them to cinders, I do not think they will be rising again. A shame you were unable to preserve any of the equipment, I would have liked to know what Hydra were doing with the blood samples they were taking.”

“Probably trying to find ways to turn it into another serum,” Bucky said bitterly. “They’re all gung-ho for injecting things into people.”

Steve gave him a quick look and Bucky carefully arranged a bland smile. 

“Be that as it may, some of the wounded _were_ villagers. I’m guessing the process isn’t completely refined. I’ve informed the general, we’ll need to place a guard on the civilians we brought back in case they start to turn. Not a good idea to have brought them to the manor, Captain.”

Steve tilted his head. “They were injured, Doctor,” he said. “They needed medical attention.”

“That you have a good heart and a compassionate soul will not help us if we end up with a manor full of vampires, Captain,” Horton said.

“Doctor Horton,” Jim squeezed the doctor’s shoulder. “They were only trying to help.”

Horton shrugged. “I am merely stating the facts, Hammond. And forgive me for being a little displeased that the General thinks it necessary to reassign you away from me. I am in the middle of some very delicate experiments and I shall miss your help.”

“Reassigned?” Bucky asked.

Jim nodded. “The General wants me to lend any assistance you might require, Captain. Dr Horton has agreed to give me a leave of absence for the duration of this mission.”

Bucky eyed Hammond. “Are you combat trained?” he said, not bothering to keep the scepticism from his voice.

“I have extensive conditioning,” Hammond said, smiling a little. “But that’s not why the General thinks I might be useful.” Hammond lifted one hand which burst into flame. “When it comes to vampires, I’m somewhat conveniently armed.”


	13. Travel

The Winter Soldier knows how to travel. He buys a bus ticket to New York. They ask him for identification, which he provides. Today he is Alain Pritchard, going home from a job interview (failed). The cover comes to him with such ease that he knows he must have used it before, the lies coming to his lips without hesitation.

The woman hands him his ticket with a sympathetic smile. “You know you can book online now, don’t you?” she says and his eyes narrow, head tilting slightly. 

“I’ll remember that,” he says.

He is going to New York because he knows of more caches there, programmed into him because of the final mission, places and names known to Rogers in case he had managed to escape the Winter Soldier in DC. Collateral damage had been _advised_ in that case — his handlers had spoken of Stark with sneers and laughter _a man and a woman in the car, mangled bodies almost beyond recognition as he climbed over the cliff to remove his magnetic mine — a boy orphaned — a mission closed —_

The bus is full and Bucky has a seat near the rear. He sleeps while the other passengers board, and through most of the trip. His body simply shuts down, and he supposes he must have been exhausted. The motel room where he was found and drugged is several days prior and he has not had a bed since.

When he wakes the bus is travelling through the outskirts of New York. He does not recognise any of the buildings. It is dark and the skyline is unfamiliar. This does not worry him. Once he is on his feet he will be able to find what he needs.

“You must be tired,” the woman sitting next to him looks more tired than the Winter Soldier feels. “I can never sleep on busses.” 

 _You need to be able to sleep anywhere, rocks, dirt, mud, bugs, if you can’t sleep you can’t fight if you can’t fight you’re dead. You eat whatever goddamn shit they serve you you eat_ all _of it you sleep whenever you’re still for more than thirty seconds and you_ stay alive _kid, you damned well stay alive._

He shrinks back from her a little, conscious of how close she is to the metal arm. It has started to make noise on its own, segments attempting to rearrange without his will. The neural connections are failing and soon it will be nothing but dead weight.

He needs someone to fix it.

He has a bad feeling there is only one person he could even contemplate trusting. Someone not SHIELD, and not Hydra.

The woman is still looking at him. He cannot answer her. He has forgotten the words.

“Go back to sleep,” she says softly. “I’ll wake you when we get to Penn Station.”

He tries to give her a nod and a smile. He does not know if he succeeds. But he must feel safe enough in her presence because he sleeps again for the remainder of the journey.

They arrive at Penn Station near midday and the Winter Soldier leaves the bus. He helps the woman with her bag. She seems about to speak to him again, but he leaves before she has the chance, slipping into a side street, his feet taking him towards the subway. He has no luggage, only his weapons and the small amount of cash he has left. The cache is close to the station, in the sewers. It is conveniently on the way.

In the distance, Avengers Tower stands, waiting for him.


	14. Night

Jim Hammond escorted Bucky and Steve away from the lab, waved off by Horton who turned back to his vials before they were even a few steps away from his bench. Bucky wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw tension ease across the android’s shoulders the further away he got from the man who was his creator, and he remembered what Jackie had said about him not necessarily wanting to be Horton’s assistant. 

“You have a room here?” Bucky said. “The Commandos are bunking down in the servant’s quarters, although the Captain has his own.”

Steve sighed. “You know I’m not going to use that, Bucky.”

“You know I would if I could.”

“You can have the key.”

“I’ll take you up on that as soon as I find someone to share it with me.”

Steve blushed all the way to his hairline and Bucky laughed. Jim listened with a faint smile as they talked, more tension easing from his shoulders. 

Bucky did it for a reason — showing people that Steve was just like regular folk was part of his job, showing people that he was just a soldier (albeit way better) was the other part of it. Steve had to be a legend but he couldn’t be legendary — the soldiers wanted him to be just like they were, or just like they thought they _could_ be. It was a fine line, and Stark had tried to explain it to Bucky once using fancy words and diagrams until Bucky had shut him down impatiently. He _knew_ what they needed to know. Instinct in this case was better than any chart of human reaction. Instinct was always better.

“I have a room next to Dr Horton’s,” Jim said. “I don’t need to sleep as much as ordinary humans though, so I tend not to be there very much.”

“You do sleep though?” Bucky asked.

Jim nodded. “Oh yes. My systems work almost identically to that of a human’s. I have blood, which carries oxygen to my brain — “ he tapped his head. “And my muscles and my systems need rest in order to function at peak efficiency. So. Sleep. I don’t dream though.”

“Lucky you,” Bucky muttered. Steve shot him a quick, concerned glance, and Bucky gave him another trademark bland smile. It didn’t fool Steve. After all, Steve was the one who slept next to him. The Commandos _knew_ but Steve _cared_ why Bucky woke in the middle of the night screaming and soaked in sweat.

They’d gotten better, the last few months, the dreams. 

“I’d like it if you bunked down with the Commandos for the duration of this mission, Hammond,” Steve said. “Not that I want to deprive you of your privacy, but we sometimes have to ship out at unexpected times and…”

“That should be no problem, Captain,” Jim said quickly and Bucky ticked the box in his head that read Dr Horton Is a Creepy Bastard and started trying to think of ways to get Hammond away from him for good. He didn’t know whether Hammond thought of the doctor as his father or as a boss, but the situation didn’t sit right with him, and Bucky could tell it didn’t sit right with Steve either.

The servants quarters had a long corridor of rooms. Each of them had two or three cots stuffed into them, all of those cots were assigned to soldiers. 

Bucky and Steve and Morita shared one, with Dernier and Gabe across the hall. Dugan had his own, by virtue of being the loudest damned snorer in the 107th. “If you don’t sleep as much as we do you can share with Dugan,” Bucky said. “Unless snoring bothers you?”

Jim shrugged. “I can adjust the sensitivity of my aural receptors.”

Bucky whistled. “Handy.” 

Jacqueline appeared at the end of the corridor before they could make their way to their quarters. “Boys. We’ve got trouble.”

 

“Holy shit,” Bucky looked through the bars at the vampires, who were snarling and gnashing at the terrified guards. They had rifles aimed at them, but Bucky remembered how the vampires in the bunker had reacted to being shot. “We need to get… what? Stakes? Garlic? Put these guys down.” They were in the basement, a stone walled area pretty much like how Bucky would have imagined a dungeon in a castle, except for the wall of wine racks and the electric lights over head. He wasn’t sure why they’d bothered to keep the vampires underground — didn’t they like that? But he couldn’t deny that the cells were efficient and a little too familiar for his liking.

General Austen and Lord Falsworth had obviously taken prisoners before now.

The thought didn’t give him any comfort at all.

“Dr Horton wants to study them if he can,” Jacqueline said. She seemed less bothered by the prospect. Jim frowned. 

“They used to be people,” Jim said. “Surely there’s something we can do to help them?”

“They used to be Hydra,” Bucky said, teeth clenched.

Steve gave him a warning look. “If we can find a way to turn them back we should,” he said. “Even if they chose this, it’s no way to live.”

“How many were turned?” Gabe asked. “Out of the ones we rescued?”

“Four,” Jaqueline said. “Father moved the other two to a cell near Dr Horton’s laboratory. We didn’t want them joining forces to break out.”

“Wise move,” Steve said. “They’re stronger than anything I’ve encountered before — Bucky and I together couldn’t handle them. Does the General have any news on what’s going on in the village? Any more disappearances since last night?”

“None so far,” Jacqueline said. “No reports of any more civilians going missing, but they’re still frightened. I can’t blame them.”

Steve took a breath. “Right. I’m going to get the Commandos to do a sweep of the area, see if we can’t locate any more of those Hydra bunkers, flush out any stray pigeons who might have escaped the first cull. Bucky I want you with Hammond and Gabe, Dernier can pair with Morita, I’ll head out with Dugan. We need a fire expert in each team. If you come across any more vampires, you light them up. Hammond you can control that flame of yours?”

“Yes Captain. Took me a while to get the hang of it, but I managed a few years back.”

“Must have been an interesting ride,” Bucky said. 

“I’ll tell you about it, if you like,” Jim said, smiling.

Steve was pacing, still talking and thinking at the same time. Bucky marvelled at it, always. He thought about things, how to get around fights. Sure he got beat up a lot, back in Brooklyn, but he was good at it. There was a reason his skinny ass had never been busted permanently, and only sixty percent of that was because Bucky was there to pull it out of the fire. “We’re going to need to keep a watch on the graveyard for at least a week, I’m guessing. These vampires turned quickly, but there’s no saying if that’s the way it normally happens…”

“The master is coming.”

Jim looked at Bucky. “Hey that wasn’t me.”

Steve, Jackie and Jim all turned back to the caged vampires. They had gone still and stopped attempting to chew through the bars at the humans in the room, but nothing about them was any less menacing.

“The master is coming.” They spoke in eerie unison.

“Oh man,” Bucky said, rubbing one hand through his hair. “This bit was _definitely_ in the book.”

Jacqueline gave Bucky a look, and stepped closer to the cage. “What do you mean? Who is the master?”

“The Baron. He knows his children have strayed. He will come and bring us back to him.”

Steve raised one eyebrow. “Son, I hate to tell you this,” he said, “but we’re not too keen on the idea of “masters” around here.”

The vampire laughed, and as his laughter echoed through the stone walled basement the lights failed.

“Oh _crap,_ ” Bucky said.


	15. Interceptions

He is a block from Stark tower when she intercepts him.

She is walking next to him without warning, matching his pace with a grace and natural rhythm that almost makes him stumble.

“You know you don’t want to walk in there by yourself.”

The street is crowded. It is calculated on her part, he realises that. He cannot take her out without drawing attention to himself, and drawing attention to himself will completely negate the purpose of his visit.

He does not answer her, but keeps walking. Eyeing places he can steer her. Incapacitate her. 

“I’m not saying you can’t walk in there at all. Tony knows me. Personal friend and all that. Doesn’t trust me, which is fine, trust is a complication a girl doesn’t need in these kind of circumstances, but we’ve fought together and that gives people a bond, you know? You do know. I know you know _that.”_

His jaw works, but he still does not speak.

“You haven’t shot me yet, so I’m guessing you’re trying to decide which alleyway to pull me into. Maybe you’re going to make it look like we’re lovers, stealing a private moment in the throng of sweaty humanity. You’re good at that, pretending. Right up to the point when you kill your cover partner, or try to.” She grins up at him. “Orders. I know. Hydra doesn’t like leaving witnesses, especially where you’re concerned. Or maybe you’re thinking you can shake me if you run but you see, _Bucky,_ I know this city better than you do, I’ve fought aliens in these streets and I’ve lived here. _Actually lived, during this century,_ and you’re always going to be on foreign ground. Until you stop running.”

The name cuts through him and he stops, not caring that the people around him swear and curse and mutter as they are forced to sidestep him on the busy sidewalk. When Rogers had used that name it had _hurt._ Worse than the wipes, worse than the arm, it had been like having his soul flayed. When she uses it it’s different. On her lips, it’s like a curse. Much easier to bear.

She tilts her head at him, still smiling. Her hair isn’t red, not at the moment, but he _knows_ her face, remembers her voice.

“Let me buy you a coffee,” she says. _“Winter Soldier.”_

 

He doesn’t know how to sit. He holds the metal arm awkwardly in his lap. Doesn’t want to sip the coffee because that will mean he has no hands free. He thinks that in her presence, not having a hand free is dangerous.

“You need Stark,” The Black Widow says. “He can fix your arm.” She has no trouble sipping her coffee. She is the most relaxed he has ever seen anyone. “But if you walk into Stark Tower he will call in every favour he has ever had, pull in every connection, Steve will turn up and he’ll probably cry and then you’ll be shipped off to anti-brainwashing camp before you’ve had a chance to find out who you really are on your own.” She purses her lips. “I think you have the capacity to do this your own way. I think if you do, it will be better for everyone in the long run. Some people? They need therapy and drugs and rehabilitation and integration. Other people?” she huffs a small laugh. “All they need is a little cognitive recalibration.”

Most of the words mean absolutely nothing to him.

“How did you find me?” he asks.

She smirks. “Hawkeye gave you my sting,” she said. “For which I gave him a stern lecture. But I know how to track my property.” He gives her a look. She shrugs. “What can I say. I’m paranoid. In my business, that’s _healthy.”_

“How can I trust you?”

“You can’t. But if you let me help you, if you promise me that when the time comes, you won’t hurt Steve, I’ll consider not killing you for putting a bullet through _me._ You know. That one time? In Russia?”

A cliff. A man — scientist? A woman. He’d killed the target with minimal collateral. 

 _“Natalia?”_ he breathes. She swallows and rocks back in her chair, shaking her head slightly. 

“No,” she says, one eyebrow twitching. _That’s not the mission, soldier._ “My name is _Natasha._ And I will help you, but you have to be _worth it.”_

His nostrils flare. “How can I be _worth it?”_

“That’s easy,” she says. “You can remember who you are.”


	16. Attack

Bucky and Steve immediately sought out the edges of the room, getting a wall behind them the way their training had taught them. Steve, Bucky knew, would be able to see perfectly well in a matter of seconds, and Bucky wouldn’t be that far behind him. Bucky figured Hammond would be mostly safe — if vampires were after human blood he wouldn’t be a prime target. Jackie, though…

She’d been closest to the cages when the lights blew. “Steve, we need to get Jackie out of here fast,” he hissed at him.

“I can see her,” Steve breathed back. “I just need to…”

Bucky felt rather than heard the rush of air as something flew past them, and then there was a screeching, wrenching sound. The bars on the cage flew outwards towards the last place Jacqueline had been standing. 

Jacqueline didn’t stand idly. As Bucky’s eyes finally caught up to his brain, he saw a flash of hair spinning in a braid as she lashed out at something that seemed to be made of smoke. Jim launched himself at the two vampires who had escaped, his hands lighting up into flame as he did so, grabbing one which began to flame and smoke immediately. Steve was struggling on the ground with the second. Bucky didn’t hesitate, but ran at the figure that was attacking Jacqueline.

It was like trying to fight himself. There was a body, but it moved so quickly that it was impossible to track. Not even sparring with Steve could have prepared him for the sheer speed and agility he was faced with. He threw punches that connected with air, kicks that hit nothing, grabbed at cloth that melted from his hands.  

Then there was a hand at his throat, and a mighty heave and Bucky was flying through the air. He hit the wall, cracked his skull, saw stars and planets and whole damned constellations in front of his eyes. On his hands and knees, not knowing how he got there, retching and reaching for a weapon, anything to slow that whirlwind of death down.

Jaqueline let out a screech that turned into a gurgle. He saw Jim, lit by fire bursting from both his hands, turn, shouting her name, as the figure who had thrown Bucky took form, one arm obscenely cupped around Jacqueline’s waist like a lover, fangs firmly sunk in her neck.

It was only a second before Jim was on him, flames licking at his body. The figure shrieked and dropped Jacqueline, and Jim wrapped his legs around him, flaming brighter, so bright that it cut through Bucky’s skull and made him want to curl in on himself.

There was another great cry, then the flaming ball that Jim had become flew across the room. The figure, still wreathed in flames itself, fled up the stairs, too fast for any of them to follow.

Bucky tried again to get to his feet but only managed to fall flat on his face. Jim had whirled around to scoop Jacqueline up in his arms, leaping up and _flying_ out of the basement through the doors that the stronger vampire had fled by. Bucky could see Steve grappling with the final vampire. Steve was in trouble. _Steve._  

He had to get to his feet. Had to. Move.

He managed one foot, then the other, then staggered towards Steve and the final vampire. They were fighting like cats, hands and feet and teeth everywhere. Steve was holding his own, but only just, and his shield was out of reach. Bucky stumbled to it, picking it up (it never weighed as much as he expected) and throwing it towards his friend.

Steve caught it and swung, a sickening crunch as it connected with the vampire’s arm enough to tell Bucky that bones had been broken. The thing skidded away along the floor just as the door to the basement (still smoking from where the flaming figure had brushed against it) swung back open. Lord Falsworth stood there, holding what looked like a fire hose. “Get down boys!” he shouted, and the end of the hose ignited, catching the vampire full in the chest.

It screamed, clawing at its body. Steve grabbed Bucky and held up the shield as gobbets of fire spewed from the disintegrating vampire’s body, splashing around the basement and doing its best to cook him alive in his skin.

When finally the room fell silent, Steve stood up.

Steve got to his feet, brushing ash from his uniform and eyeing Bucky. “You okay?”

“Super,” Bucky said. The ringing in his head was already starting to fade. “Hammond ran with Jackie though — she looked like she was bitten — “

Lord Falsworth looked grim. “Jim got her to Dr Horton,” he said. “It looks bad.” There was an awkward silence as Falsworth surveyed the damage, then the two soldiers. “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Captain Rogers,” he said. Steve slotted his shield back on his back and crossed his arms over his chest. 

“I was beginning to get that impression,” he said. 

“Meet me in the infirmary,” Falsworth said. “It looks like your Sergeant could do with a bit of medical attention. And I have a little explaining to do.” Falsworth left, directing the remaining guards to help him with the fire-hose like contraption that had disintegrated the vampires.

“Would have been handy to have that right next to the cell,” Bucky said, then wobbled a little on his feet. 

Steve caught him. “Easy there, Buck,” he said. Bucky shrugged him off.

“I’m _fine_ Steve.”

“You hit that wall like a truck. Even _your_ head’s not that thick. Let’s make sure you’re not gonna start vomiting on my boots next mission, okay?”

Bucky bristled, it wasn’t like he was the one who had made sure Steve went to the doctor about his lungs, stopped him from sleeping in the path of that draft in the apartment after his mom passed and the warm spot was free. 

Steve didn’t need that kind of care any more.

But it was vital that Steve thought Bucky still did. 

“Sure. Fine.”

At the infirmary, Jacqueline was hooked up to a drip. To Bucky’s surprise, so was Jim.

Lord Falsworth gave both Steve and Bucky a look. “Jackie was born with a very rare blood type,” he said. “Her mother had it. And Jim is a universal donor. He offered.”

“Hammond’s blood… can be used for humans?” Bucky said.

“Absolutely,” Dr Horton was standing near Hammond, monitoring the transfer. Jacqueline looked pale, her shirt ripped at the throat and at the sleeve to allow access for the transfusion. Jim was sitting in a seat near her.

“She was bitten, General,” Bucky said harshly. “She’ll turn.”

“No,” Jim said. “No she won’t.”

“Look, Jim, I don’t want to be the bad guy here but you saw what happened down in that cell,  you saw what they _did…”_

“She’s not dead,” Jim said desperately. “The others were hydra, they wanted to attack us, Captain, Captain Rogers you fought one of them…”

Steve’s jaw worked. “They weren’t as strong as the ones we fought in the bunker, Bucky. I don’t think the transformation was complete.”

“No.” Horton said, still fiddling with the transfer line. “They require the taste of human blood in order to turn completely.”

Bucky cocked his head. “And you know this _how?”_

“There’s a reason the General called me here from America, Sergeant,” he said. 

“Vampires are not unknown here,” Lord Falsworth said softly. “We deal with them. Normally. We have specialists. But the war has taken its toll on Europe, as you well know, Captain. Our resources are limited. And the Baron has never taken _allies_ like this before.”

“Hang on just one second,” Steve surged to his feet. “The Baron? You know who this monster is, and you didn’t tell us?”

Lord Falsworth held up his hands. “I’m not going to try to justify it to you, Captain,” he said. “The General didn’t think you needed to know the full history. But the Baron has been a presence here for centuries.”

“And you haven’t wiped him out? That _thing_ nearly killed your daughter!”

Falsworth was tight lipped and angry, but Bucky figured he didn’t want to be seen to shout at Captain America, especially not with his daughter’s life hanging in the balance right under their noses. One of the field attempted to take Bucky to a cot, but he shook her off. His head was _fine._ He didn’t need any help.

“The Baron doesn’t usually surface so blatantly. He travels. He rarely kills. We have a treaty, of sorts.”

Steve did not look impressed. “With a monster.”

“A monster who listens to reason,” Falsworth said. “Until now.”

Jacqueline moaned and moved her head to one side. Jim leaned forward and squeezed her hand, face tight with worry. 

“You have to have known it would only be a matter of time,” Steve said. 

“We didn’t anticipate that Hydra would offer Blood better terms,” Doctor Horton said, his voice flat. “In any case it is immaterial. Blood is on the loose, he has bitten Lady Jacqueline. She will be tormented by thirst until she takes the life of a human, at which point she will turn into a true vampire. There is only one way to stop that from happening.”

“We _can_ stop it?” Bucky said.

“Yes,” Lord Falsworth said. “By killing Baron Blood.”


	17. Detatched

They meet Stark in a warehouse on the edge of town. He tugs at the corners of the Winter Soldier’s memories, but he is beginning to believe that everything does, that there is something going on in his brain that Rogers started and cannot be stopped. 

He does not know if he wants it stopped, but it has begun to feel like he is constantly teetering on the edge of an abyss. Cold, and dark, and very very deep.

“You know, usually when I get a mysterious invitation from an attractive woman — “

“They’re not likely to slit your throat before you finish that sentence?”

Tony Stark gives a half grin that makes the Winter Soldier feel a touch of panic. He steps back. He knows that grin. “Who is he any way? He looks like some sort of hobo. Are you starting a charity? Why have you invited me here? I didn’t think you liked my kind of parties.”

“This is Bucky Barnes, Tony.”

Stark laughs. Bucky doesn’t know what to do with the sound of that laugh. It’s wrong. Broken somehow. Not what it should be. “Good one.”

She sighs. “Didn’t you read the files? I made sure they all downloaded to Jarvis before I leaked them to everyone else.”

Stark frowns, and for the first time since they have arrived in this dingy place on the edge of New York his voice sounds _honest._ “I read the files. This isn’t Bucky Barnes. This is some Hydra wind-up toy that looks like Steve’s best friend.” Natasha casually moves herself between the Winter Soldier and Tony Stark. the Winter Soldier wonders if he should feel angry at Stark’s words. Intellectually, he thinks, he should. _Bucky Barnes_ would feel angry. At being called a toy. At being relegated to _Steve’s best friend._

_As if that was all he ever was._

He can move far faster than Natasha, but he chooses not to. “It’s not about who you think I am,” he says, softly.

Stark looks at him. The Winter Soldier has never had occasion to turn away from a direct gaze, but he considers it for a moment. He did kill this man’s parents. He remembers their bodies. But he cannot, with any clarity, remember why.

“Then what is it about, Barnes?” Stark asks. “What is this really about? Because if I fix your arm and you go out and you kill more people? Then that’s _my_ fault. I’m responsible for the deaths you cause with that thing, and I’ve been responsible for too many already. One more. One. Single. More. Would be too much.”

“I cannot promise you not to kill.”

“So you don’t get your arm back, soldier.”

Natasha makes an exasperated sound. “Tony you’re being irrational.”

Stark shakes his head. “I really don’t think I am.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “When you left Yinsen to die how much did you really know about yourself, Tony Stark?”

The Winter Soldier does not know what she is talking about, but it is obvious she has hit a raw nerve. Stark reels, and his lip curls and he points at her chest. “Fuck you Natalie _Rushman.”_

_This is wasting time._

“Remove it,” The Winter Soldier says. They both look at him. “Remove the arm,” he says again. “If you can’t fix it. _Get rid of it.”_

The last comes out in a snarl and Stark’s eyes widen for a second, before narrowing. “Okay I’m good with that.”

Natasha growls under her breath and turns towards the door. “Last time I ever ask you for _anything_ Stark.”

“Why is it so important to _you?”_

She spins back. “Because I care about Steve. Because I care about what I used to be and what all of us could become. Obviously you don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If it’d had been Steve in that chair instead of Barnes they would have done the same to him. It wouldn’t have mattered how much he didn’t want it. It wouldn’t have _mattered_ Tony. Loki did it to Clint. Hydra did it to James. He saved Steve’s _life…”_

“After nearly killing him.”

“Nearly is not the same.”

“I want it gone,” the Winter Soldier says firmly. “Natasha?”

She looks away when he says her name. 

Stark points at him. _“He_ wants it gone, I’m happy to do that.”

Natasha throws up her hands. “Right.”

They sit him in a chair. The Winter Soldier is skittish about it, but the machines are different, and there are no restraints. Stark talks to something that isn’t there. “Jarvis give me a complete scan.” There is no pain. After a few minutes, a holographic display of his body is thrown up around the room and for the first time he can see exactly what they did to him.

The arm cannot be removed.

Metal snakes up and into his chest, nerve endings and wiring interchanging. Stark looks at it with growing horror; Natasha seems unsurprised. The Winter Soldier knows precisely where each clamp and each connection is, he can feel it if he thinks about it hard enough. 

He has never had occasion to think about it before now.

“If I try to take this out I’ll kill him,” Stark says softly. 

“If you don’t fix it, he’ll die,” Natasha replies.

Stark makes a gesture and the displays collapse. He turns to the Winter Soldier and looks into his eyes for a long moment. 

“Fine.”


	18. Complications

“So you were bitten by a vampire and Jim here gave you synthetic blood, and that saved you?” Sam said.

Jackie laughed, trailing her fingers over the window sill and looking out at the hospital gardens. “It was a bit more complicated than that, wasn’t it, Steve?”

Steve’s smile didn’t quite match Jackie’s. Thinking of the rest of that mission sometimes still gave him nightmares. “A little,” he said. “We didn’t know about Jackie’s mutation then, so killing Blood was the only option we had to save her from — ”

Steve’s phone rang. He pulled it out, figuring it was Nat, or Maria, or even at a pinch, Fury calling from wherever he was in Europe now. 

It wasn’t any of them.

“Barton?” 

“What’s that?” Jackie asked.

“Hawkeye,” Sam said. “Steve. Have you heard from him since…”

Steve shook his head. “Clint isn’t Hydra,” he answered the phone. “Barton?”

“Steve,” Clint sounded a little out of breath, but otherwise fine. “I thought you should know. I was just at Nat’s and a one armed man showed up and he wasn’t on the run from a doctor looking for his dead wife.”

“You saw Bucky?”

There was a pregnant silence. “Look, Cap, I don’t know who he used to be but I don’t think he’s your long lost war buddy any more.”

“A lot of people are trying to convince me of that, Clint. I haven’t heard any compelling arguments.”

“You’re the only one who can tell otherwise, and if you want to believe that it’s him I’ll back you. Just. He’s fudging terrifying, okay? Was your buddy more frightening than Bruce on a bad day?”

_Bucky charging into battle with a shout and a smile. Bucky pulling bullies from him in alleyways, kicking them so hard they cried as they ran away. Bucky coldly sniping a Hydra soldier about to stab Steve in the gut._

“He had his moments,” Steve said softly.

Clint took a deep breath. “I’m not going to be the one who puts an arrow through his eye, bro. I helped him. As much as I could. Natasha is pretty pissed at me but I’m used to that.”

“You helped him?”

“He’s running from Hydra. If he’d turned up ready to kill I wouldn’t have hesitated, you know that. But he warned me about them. I gotta tell you, Steve, he’s…”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.” More tension eased from Steve’s shoulders. The Winter Soldier would have hurt Clint. Killed him without a second thought. “He took something from Nat’s weapons cupboard, zapped himself with it, and ran.”

“He zapped himself?”

“On the arm. The metal one, not the real one. Not sure why. I’ve let Nat know, I figure she’s already found him and trussed him up for you like a birthday present, but she might take a few hours to call.”

“How do you know he was running from Hydra?”

“They turned up a few seconds after he left. I figure they were following him. It was a fun ride but they’re all in official custody now, the ones who didn’t chow down on an arsenic tooth any way — CIA took them. I _think._ I don’t know who handles what any more since you completely dismantled my entire livelihood. Thanks for that by the way.”

“I didn’t really have a choice.”

There was a dry laugh. “No, it’s all right, I was thinking of quitting.”

“We’ll be back in DC as soon as we can, Clint.”

“Be fast. Something tells me he’s not going to stay in one place for very long. I wouldn’t, if I were him. And Hydra want him _very_ badly. He’s not going to be safe on his own for long.”

“He won’t be on his own, Clint.”

“I kinda guessed you were going to say that. Stay safe.”

Steve hung up and looked over at Jackie, who was watching him intently. Sam rubbed the back of his head. “Man I haven’t even gotten _started_ on my jet lag.”

“We need to get back to DC, but I don’t like to leave you here, not after what happened last night.”

“Steve I can’t go back, not yet. I need to find Kenneth. I need to find out who turned him. And I need to kill them.”

“Do you have any idea?”

Jackie swallowed. “I can find him, but you’re not going to like how. I don’t want to ask you, Steve, I know you need to find Bucky but we don’t have the time to wait on this. If Ken manages to kill he’ll be gone forever and I — “

Steve looked out the window and sighed. Bucky could look after himself for a few days, and if Natasha was looking, if Natasha _found_ him, he would be in the safest hands that Steve knew, outside his own.

“We can help,” he said. “I owe you that much, Jac.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Steve,” she said. “If it’s any consolation, I’ll be fast.”

“So how do you intend to find him, Ms Falsworth?” Sam asked. “You said Steve wouldn’t like how?”

“He never did like it when I used the other half of my powers,” Jackie said. “For obvious reasons.”

“You have more powers than looking real good for your age?”

Jackie nodded, then closed her eyes. When she opened them again they were red rimmed, and her teeth had lengthened into unmistakable vampire fangs. “He’s my son,” she said, and her voice had roughened. Sam took a step back and Steve squeezed his arm in reassurance. “I know his scent.”


	19. Why

Natasha leads him out of the warehouse, having disabled Stark with a stunning shot from her wrists. Stark seems to almost have anticipated it, turning at just the right moment for her to brush his neck. She assures the Winter Soldier that it was not a strong enough charge to affect Stark’s somewhat erratic heart, and calls emergency services as soon as they are a block away.

He flexes the arm, which works perfectly. Better, in fact, than it had done before the helicarrier. Stark knows his work. 

It does not please him.

“You need to keep moving,” Natasha says to him. “Steve isn’t stupid, Stark and Barton will have told him that you’re alive, that you’re moving, that you’re competent.”

They stop, on a deserted street corner, near Brooklyn. It smells familiar. The Winter Soldier feels like there is warmth seeping up from the pavement into his heart.  

He fears if he stays in this city he will melt. 

“Is there anywhere you can go?”

He nods. “There are many safe houses. They will check them but they can’t track me any longer. I won’t be ambushed again.”

“Avoid them as long as possible. Barton and I are clearing out as many Hydra cells as we can, you should have less and less trouble as time goes on.”

He tilts his head. “Why are you helping me?”

She tosses her head in a gesture that pulls at him. He raises his right arm, automatically, and brushes the errant strand of hair from her forehead.

He _knows_ he has done that for her before.

She steps back. Out of his reach. “I knew you,” she says simply. “After you were ‘James Buchanan Barnes’.” She puts quotes around the name that he can _hear_ and her voice becomes ponderous. Familiar. It hurts. “Even then you were a good man.” Her hand drifts to her middle. He has a sudden image of her pressed against him. The stock of a weapon in one hand. A shot. Another death.

Not, evidently, hers.

She takes something from her jacket pocket — a packet. Clumsy and crude and the last line of communication ever used by his handlers. Sometimes, however, necessary. He takes it.

“You can’t leave the States. You’d be picked up in seconds. But I can help you hide for as long as you need to. I don’t need to know where you are, but Steve does and he won’t stop looking.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“He thinks you’re still the man you were.”

The war hero who died to save his friend. The only one to give his life in the service of his country. If the Winter Soldier closes his eyes he can read every word of the display, see every newsreel. He’d stayed at the exhibit until it had closed and they’d escorted him out and he had never recaptured that feeling he’d had on the helicarrier, the feel of Rogers’ blood on his hands, the look in his eyes, the thread that bound them to each other.

“I’m not.”

She shrugs. “You shouldn’t have fished him out of the damned river then, James,” she says. “Because that’s not something the Winter Soldier would have done. And if you’re not the Winter Soldier, then as far as Steve is concerned, you’re Bucky Barnes.” Her eyes are suddenly very sad. “He doesn’t understand that there might be a third option.”

“And you do?”

She shakes her head, sighing. “I don’t know. For me, maybe. For me, there’s always another option. I spent my life learning to be different people. But you never learned to be someone other than who you are, did you James? _They_ told you. They forced you to be what they wanted and every time you showed a sign of not fitting the mould they wiped you.”

He backs away. “How do you _know_ all of this?”

“I was KGB once. I have friends. They know you just like I did.” 

“I was Hydra.” _Your work has been a gift to mankind._

“That isn’t all you were.” She looks like she wants to come closer. He doesn’t want her closer. The memories that she evokes, they tease at the edge of his mind and hint at answers that he needs — but they are not _good._

He _wants_ all of the memories. He thinks maybe that hers would be different than his, than Rogers’ — perhaps closer to what he is now to what he was then. They might be more painful. They might be easier to understand.

“Steve will know by now that I’m helping you,” she says. “He’ll want me to take care of you. He’ll want me to keep you safe.”

“You can’t.”

She nods. “I know. But it’s your choice. You can go by yourself, knowing that I’ll tell him everything that’s happened here. Or.”

He shakes his head. “You won’t come with me.”

She smiles. “You don’t want me to.”

She is free. He is not. There are places he needs to go before Rogers finds him, and she would not understand.

She raises a hand. Hesitates. Touches his cheek. He thinks he should flinch, but doesn’t. “It was good to see you again,” she says, then starts to back away. 

“You could tell me everything,” he says, before she slips into the shadows. “How you know me. What we did.”

“I could,” she says. “Maybe when Steve finds you he will do that. But I don’t want to.”

“If you see him before I do — “

“What?”

“Tell him to let me get there myself. I think. I think —“ _you always stand up. I can get by on my own. You don’t have to. But I need to._

_If I don’t get there on my own I might never get there at all._

She nods. “I think he’ll understand.” 


	20. Thirst

Her throat burned. On the covers, her hand clutched and she struggled to sit up.

“Easy, Jackie,” her brother was there. Of course he was. Jimmy always looked after her.

He smelt different.

“Jimmy?”

“You’ve been hurt, Jackie,” her brother’s voice was too loud and she flinched from it. 

“Thirsty.”

There was movement next to her bed and Jimmy’s hand, hot against her skin, gently helped her to sit up.

All she knew was need.

She lunged at him, mouth open, fangs growing. 

A strong hand knocked her back. She flipped over the bed, landing on her feet and lunged forward again, only to hit a solid wall of muscle, big hands gripping her arms.

“Holy _moly_ Steve she moved faster than I’ve ever seen anyone…” Sergeant Barnes. 

“She’s hard to hold too, Bucky.” It was the Captain. The Captain was holding her, hands like iron clamping around her. She didn’t know precisely why she was struggling, but she was weak, and there was something about the arms that held her that was so… so tempting. 

She went limp, instinct taking over, and turned her head to look up into blue, blue eyes. “Captain Rogers,” she breathed.

“Ma’am, you’re not well.”

Sergeant Barnes’ desperate shout felt like a hammer to her ears, everything was so much louder, so much brighter, if she could only… 

_“Steve!”_

She lunged for his neck, trying desperately to latch on to the vein. She must _drink._ She must _kill_ and the man in front of her smelt more delicious than any food she’d ever eaten in her life before, but the Captain held her back.

Another hand grabbed her shoulder and wrenched her back and arms came around her from behind. 

“Jac, I can’t let you eat the Captain.”

_Jim._

_Jim Hammond._

_What was she doing?_

“Oh god,” Jim didn’t smell like food. “Jim get everyone out. Everyone except you. Get them _out before I hurt them.”_

“You heard her!”

Captain Rogers stepped forward but Jackie snarled at him, fangs protruding. _“Go.”_

Barnes, blessed, sensible James Buchanan Barnes, grabbed his Captain’s arm and started dragging him towards the door. “You heard the lady, Cap. She’s in a mood and we don’t want to upset her.”

“But Hammond…”

“Is made of synthetics, she’s not gonna eat _him,_ come _on_ Steve.”

Their voices faded, but she could still, if she concentrated, hear the back and forth between the two friends as they went away. Something was wrong, in the undercurrents, something that they were not saying, but she was too wracked by thirst to tease out the connections, and Jim’s arms around her felt safe and warm.

She turned, pulling away slightly, and Jim, who looked a little dazed, let his hands drop.

“Are you all right, Jackie?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Jim,” she said softly. “I really don’t think so at all.”

“What can I do?”

 

An hour later, she sat, strapped to a chair behind bars in the same cell where they had kept the vampires from the bunker. Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes stood with Jim and Dr Horton and General Austen and her brother, facing her. She could not stop herself from occasionally testing her bonds. What frightened her was that she thought, if she tested them hard enough, they would break.

“I’m so sorry, Jackie,” Jimmy said. “We were too late.”

She swallowed. Licked her lips. “I can feel him,” she said.

“Who?” Rogers asked.

“I can feel the master.” She made a face. Tried to correct herself. “I can feel… Blood. Baron Blood.”

“What does she mean?” Austen said.

“Mind control,” Dr Horton said briskly. “All the other subjects exhibited it. Quite frankly I’m surprised Lady Jacqueline was able to stop herself from killing you, Captain Rogers. Every other specimen I’ve studied has shown no hesitation in attacking as soon as they awaken.”

Jackie tested her bonds again. “I’m no fool, Doctor,” she said softly. “I’m not about to attack Captain America.”

“You wanted to though.” Sergeant Barnes. He was hard faced, unsympathetic. Horton didn’t care, Horton wanted her for his experiments. Jimmy and Hammond would do anything they could to save her. Rogers was the same — always willing to think the best of everyone. Austen would kill her as soon as look at her, but couldn’t be seen to get his hands dirty, not when he was relying on her father for his operations. Barnes though… “I wanted to,” she said, turning to him. “But I stopped myself.”

“Really.” Barnes crossed his arms over his chest, not giving an inch. “Because from where I was standing it looked like Hammond pulled you off like a mad dog.”

“Bucky,” Rogers’ voice was warning, harsh, but Barnes didn’t let up. He approached the cage she sat in, eyes boring into hers.

“I told you to get out,” she said. “I know what I wanted to do. My mind is my own.”

“So why are you calling the thing that bit you your _master_ Lady J?”

_Come to me._

“He’s _not,”_ her breath came in pants. She wanted to tear his throat out. She wanted to drink him dry and leave his body to rot in the earth. “My mind is my own and it will stay that way. But he wants me and I know where he is. _I can lead you to him.”_

Austen’s eyebrow twitched. “You can lead us to the Baron?”

She nodded. “He’s not far. Jim hurt him. He’s vulnerable and he needs to feed.” She made a face. “He’s going to attack. Tonight. He won’t care how many he kills. But if we can get to him before then, before nightfall, we’ll be able to kill him.” _Bring them to me._

Jimmy touched Barnes’ shoulder. “Sergeant, if she can lead us to Blood we have to use her. There’s no way we’ll be able to find him on our own you saw how he moved.”

“She’s too strong to control,” Barnes said. “You saw how fast she moved. She was as fast as he was. _Faster.”_

“Let me,” Hammond said. “Let me take her. She doesn’t want _me._ She said as much. I can keep in radio contact with you, keep her company, stop her from hurting anyone…”

“Hammond you can’t,” Rogers’ voice was gentle and Jackie knew what he was going to say. 

“Cap’s right,” Barnes said gruffly. “You wouldn’t do what needed to be done, if it came to that.”

Hammond spun on the sergeant, looking ready for murder.

“And _you would?”_

Barnes nodded. “Damned right I would,” he said. 

Rogers put a hand on Hammond’s shoulders, looking him in the eye, warning him. Even in the midst of her pain Jackie could admire that he stopped before laying a hand on Barnes, simply by the force of the Captain’s will. 

“He’s right,” she managed. It was hard to talk. Hard to say the words the Baron didn’t want her to say. “I need someone who will do what needs to be done if it comes to that. Kill me. I don’t want to live like those things we saw.”

“He’s not fast enough, or strong enough,” Hammond insisted. “He won’t be able to do it.”

“Try me,” Barnes said.

“I won’t attack him,” Jackie said. “I’ll let him kill me first.”

“I’ll go with you,” Steve said to Barnes. “Two of us together should be able to —“ 

“No,” Jackie said. “No Captain you can’t. You’re worse… the thirst… you would…” 

Rogers’ eyebrow twitched and his cheeks coloured a little. 

“Absolutely not, Captain,” Austen said. “Who knows what might happen if a vampire managed to get a dose of super soldier serum through your blood. We can’t let you anywhere near the Baron unless we’re sure he’s going to be dead before he can get his fangs into you.”

“I don’t want Bucky going alone,” Rogers said.

“I can _handle_ it, Steve.”

“The sergeant should be fine,” Dr Horton said. “This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered someone infected who has not yet taken a life. Luckily I can give you something to suppress the thirst, Lady Jacqueline. We developed it in Romania, the first time we encountered some of Blood’s victims. It should be enough to give you the control you need in order not to hurt the Sergeant before we locate Baron Blood.”

Jackie took a deep, shuddering breath. “Please, give it to me now.”

“It would be safer if it were me,” Hammond said. “You know she doesn’t want my blood.”

“No,” Jackie said, looking up at Hammond. “No, Jim. I need it to be Barnes. I need to know that he’ll stop me. If it comes to that.”

Dr Horton was prepping a syringe. Hammond took it from him when it was ready, and he approached the cage, unlocking it and stepping inside. Jac’s nostril’s flared, fighting against the instinct to break her bonds and lunge at the Captain _imagine the power if you took him_ and forced breath through her nose as Hammond gently rolled up her sleeve and injected her with the formula.

There was a moment when she thought it hadn’t worked, then she felt the edge of the thirst lessen. She still _wanted_ but she could feel distance there, now.

Jim smoothed her hair back from her forehead and kissed it gently. She smiled at him. “Thank you, Jim,” she said. 

Captain Rogers nodded to her brother, and to the General. “With your permission, sir? I’d like a moment alone with the lady.”

Barnes shook his head. “Steve it’s not safe…”

“Bucky she’s restrained, and she doesn’t want to hurt me. And you can’t expect me to let you go off on a mission with her if you won’t even let me be in the same room.”

Barnes looked like he was going to say something to that, but instead he shook his head, and led the rest of the men out of the room. Captain Rogers approached her, and he was so big, and bright, he burned like the sun. Even with the injection it took an effort of will not to break her bonds and take him.

“If you hurt him you’ll regret it, Lady Jacqueline,” he said, leaning down and unfastening her restraints. 

“I won’t hurt him, Captain,” she said, flexing her wrists. “You have my word.”

He nodded. “Good.”


	21. Family

“Steve, since I’ve met you I’ve done a lot of crazy things, but following a vampire through the south of England is definitely up there with running from a helicarrier while it crashed into SHIELD headquarters.” Steve had rented a motorbike and Sam was seated behind him. For someone who flew with nothing but a jet pack on his back Sam clutched at Steve a little tightly when they went around corners. There’d been a few moments when he’d been upset at how Steve drove, too.

“You never did tell me how you got out of that one,” Steve said. 

“Fury and Nat caught me in a helicopter.”

“You know what, that’s… good. I’m glad you’re okay, Sam.”

“Me too.”

They pulled up at their destination.

Jac had found Kenneth with characteristic speed. There was a nest of vampires in Manchester, an old tenement building that reminded Steve of where he’d lived with his mom. Run down, but not so run down as to attract squatters. He would bet the interior would be nicer than the exterior — a lot of houses in the area had been renovated. “Gentrified” Natasha called it, this obsession with taking things that were old and making them somehow modern. Steve wasn’t sure how he felt about it, to look at a building or an area and make assumptions but _feel_ that they were wrong, in the way the people of the neighbourhood stepped.

He thought back to Fury, in the lift before he’d known about insight. The creeping fear that Hydra had instilled in society with subtle cues and directions. Wondered if it was part of it, this idea that something could look poor but be wealthy, and, he supposed, the other way around.

Jac was waiting for them there, leaning nonchalantly on an expensive looking European car that Steve _knew_ she hadn’t used to get there. Jim was next to her, eyeing the building.

“Took you long enough to get here,” she said shortly. Steve had briefly wondered if she’d be donning the yellow suit and mask she’d worn for those few missions in Europe but she was, instead, sensibly dressed in a jumpsuit very like Natasha’s, lightweight but sturdy boots, her white hair neatly tied in a braid.

“Unfortunately the serum didn’t give me super speed,” he said dryly. 

Jac’s face was drawn, older, as though the rejuvenation of Hammond’s blood couldn’t break through the weight of worry she was carrying for her son. 

“How many vampires, are there?” Sam asked. He hesitated over the word vampire again, and Steve resisted the urge to touch his shoulder in reassurance again. People didn’t like to touch so much, these days. Steve missed it.

“Six,” she said. “Steve I can’t ask you to go in there with me, especially not with Sam. You know… how nice you smell.” She smirked a little at that and Sam raised his eyebrows at him.

“The serum,” Steve said shortly. “It, uh, makes my blood more palatable.”

“Your blood, hey?” Sam said, smirking.

Jac grinned. “That said, there is a way you could be helpful. Considering how tasty you smell.”

Steve could see where this was going. “I could be your distraction,” he said.

Her eyes brightened a little bit. “Steven Grant Rogers, are you offering to be _bait?”_

He shrugged. “Wasn’t that where you were heading?”

She bit her lip. “I was, but I’m not sure how safe it would be to — “

There was a crash from the tenement. 

“Jim hasn’t decided to take matters into his own hands again has he?” Jac said, looking put out as she turned towards the building. 

“I don’t see any flames.”

“I’m _right here,”_ Jim was smiling, but confused as the rest of them.

They approached the building, in time to see a figure crash through the back windows.

“Uh, do either of you know the bald black dude with the tattoos?” Sam asked. “He looks pretty scary.”

“Bloody hell,” Jac breathed. “Of all the… Jesus.” There was a cry from inside. Steve’s enhanced hearing could pick it up, that peculiar cadence that vampire voices had. It sounded like they were saying _The daywalker!_ “Steve, _Kenneth_ is in there.”

Jac sped away from him before he could stop her. “Sam!”

Sam already had his guns out, even without wings Steve trusted him to back him up. Steve nodded to him, once, then followed Jac into the nest.

It was chaos. 

A tall, black coated man stood in the centre of the room, two swords drawn. One vampire lay beheaded on the ground, four more were rotting with stakes through their chests. The streak that was Jac sped through the room like an aimed bullet, and he saw her throw herself on another vampire. It was obvious that she was protecting him from the other man, who didn’t hesitate, but pulled another stake from the bandolier on his chest that held a large and frightening array of weaponry, and impaled her with it.

There was a crash as Jim flew in, going straight to Jac’s side. She was alive, that much he could see, but there was a stake through her chest, and she was panting and bleeding. Kenneth, whose life she had saved, cradled her in his arms, looking distressed. Jim stood over him, frowning down at him.

“No!” Steve leapt forward, grabbing hold of the man with both hands and pulling him back. “Jackie!”

The man shrugged him off with power that was incredible, adjusting his swords and spinning around to face Steve. Steve braced himself, ready for attack. “You’re no vampire,” he said, voice gruff. Then he eyed the shield and one dark eyebrow twitched. “Or I’m a little more behind the times than I’d usually like to admit.” 

“I’m not,” Steve said, shifting the shield in his grip. “And you just staked my friend. Give me a reason why I shouldn’t serve you some of the same medicine.”

“Your _friend_ is a vampire.”

“Thank you for stating the obvious,” Steve said, exasperated. “She’s been a vampire for more than ninety years and she’s _never killed a soul.”_

The man laughed. “You expect me to believe that? I know their kind.”

Jac gave a strangled groan and the man turned. Kenneth, on the ground, looked up at him, his face hard, younger than it should be, fangs down. Steve’s heart lurched. He’d never met Ken, he was in the ice long before Jac was even married, but the face had a lot of his mother about him. “You can’t stop us, daywalker,” Kenneth growled out. “My mother will be healed soon and she will be one of us. The first in a new breed of super vampire. We will destroy you.”

Jac let out a small cry. “Ken. Ken we’re too late?”

Kenneth hissed down at his mother, whose face was stricken. “I killed the first night I rose, Mother. I killed so I would have the strength to give to you. To bring you back to us.”

Steve’s shoulders slumped. He’d suspected, but to hear it straight from Kenneth’s mouth must have ripped Jac’s heart to shreds.

He didn’t expect what happened next, however.

“I’m so sorry, Ken,” she said. 

“Mother?”

She lifted one hand to cup her son’s cheek. The man next to him took a step forward, but Steve put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him from going forward. “You’ve done enough damage today I think,” he murmured.

“Well yeah, I was hoping to do more.”

Kenneth smiled down at his mother. “You’ll join us, then?” he said. “It will be glorious, mother. Just like you told me when I was a child.”

“I love you,” Jac said.

Only Steve had eyes fast enough to see Jac move. The man next to him staggered back as Jac plucked a stake from his belt and whirled back around to her son, impaling him with perfect aim. There was a small, wet sound. Kenneth slid downwards, Jac cupping him around his waist as he went. She cradled his head in her hands on the ground, mirroring how he had been holding her moments before.

Steve took the strange man’s arm and nodded to Jim, who was watching them, stricken. “We need to give her some time,” he said. 

“Hell no,” The man said. “I came here to kill every vampire in this nest, there’s one left by my reckoning.”

Jim flew at the man in a rage, fists blazing. Before Steve could react he was pinned to a wall, one fist flaming in front of the man’s face. “You _won’t touch her.”_

Jac lent down and kissed Ken’s still face, then stood, a little wobbly, and moved to Jim, gently pulling back his fist. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “Blade just… has a singular focus, that’s all.”

Steve looked at Jac, frowning. “You know him?”

She nodded. “Eric, we’ve met. You don’t remember because I looked different,”

“Lady I’ve never seen you before in my life,” the man — Blade — said. “You’re a vampire and you’re a vampire with super powers, it’s not worth any one in this room’s life to let you out alive.” With that he shoved at Jim and Jim flew backwards, lunging forward with his swords to Jac, who stepped aside faster than the eye could see. Steve stepped forward and raised his shield, blocking the sword strike that had been intended for his friend.

“Listen to me,” Steve said. “You’re trying to do the right thing, I get that. But if you try to touch her again, I’m going to get _very angry.”_

Blade’s sword bounced off the shield and he stepped back, eyes narrowing. “Captain America, defending a vampire? You know when that business in Washington broke they were saying you were Hydra.”

Steve didn’t hesitate, but stepped forward and backhanded the shield across Blade’s face. “I’m _not,”_ he hissed. Blade didn’t bother to dodge, and he didn’t fall, just rolled with the blow, shook his head and spat, smiling a little. “This is Jacqueline Falsworth-Crichton — she was a member of MI5 for seventy years, she fought with me against Hydra and the Red Skull and was _personally_ responsible for saving my life on no less than three occasions. She is _not_ a threat, and you will _stand down.”_

Both of Jim’s fists were blazing now. “Not to mention she just staked her own son, you bastard,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Brother when Captain America tells you to stand down I really think you ought to listen,” Sam had appeared behind Blade, and had one of his pistols pointed at the back of his head. 

Blade lifted both his hands, still smiling, letting the swords clatter to the floor. “Fine,” he said. “But she’ll turn on you. And when she does I’ll be there to put a stake through her again.”

Jac gave a snort. “Well, handsome, you’re gonna have to learn how to aim a little better if you want to kill me.”

“I know how fast you can move now,” Blade said.

She smirked. “Oh I doubt it.” Jac squeezed Jim’s hand. “Let him go, boys. He’s not going to hurt me any more today. I’ll call Pete and let him know the Daywalker is back on the rampage. Maybe he can sort out who turned Kenneth.”

“The Daywalker?” Sam asked. Jac looked at him, her eyes deep and shadowed. There was something contemplative in that look, something like kinship. Blade stared right back at her, waiting.

“He’s a vampire too,” Jac said finally. “Or at least, half of one. He walks in the daylight — vampires aren’t very imaginative when they come up with names you know.” Her eyes turned hard. “Not as unique as you thought you were, are you now, Eric?”

“Remains to be seen,” Blade said. He turned his head to look at Sam, and raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to make me come back for my weapons?”

Steve stepped back and nodded to Sam, who moved aside enough for Blade to reach down and pick up his swords.

“I’ll be speaking to Pete Wisdom,” he said as he moved to the door.

“Use small words,” Jac said. “I think he has a hangover today.”

Blade left and Steve turned to Jac, who took a deep breath. “We need to burn this place to the ground,” she said softly. “Jim?”

“Are you certain?” he asked her. “Jackie?”

She nodded, rolling her shoulders. The wound in her chest was already closing, blood drying on skin. Her white hair was streaked with red, and there were tears on her cheeks, but her voice was steady. “And then we’ll go and find Bucky for you, Steve. I’ve had enough of England for the time being.”


	22. Programming

The Winter Soldier stays in New York for a day. 

It’s all he can manage, it’s all that his instincts will allow, and it’s all that he needs.

He visits the neighbourhood that the Smithsonian says he grew up in. He. Him. Bucky Barnes. The neighbourhood that Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers grew up in. It’s changed, he thinks, although he cannot put a finger on exactly why he knows that. The muddy streets, the run down doors, the stench of woodsmoke and dirt changed to the smell of diesel and garbage. His feet carry him through those streets and he can almost see the outline of the buildings he knew hiding in the new fronts and flashing lights.

It’s been too long and nothing is the same but nothing has changed. There is a sharp tug of an undefinable emotion when he gets to what used to be Ebbet’s field. He doesn’t even know why he knows what it should be called, but what he was expecting isn’t there. There’s an apartment block, now, tall and soulless. The Winter Soldier stands looking at it for a long moment, frowning, thinking he should be feeling something but not knowing what it could possibly be. There are voices floating at the edge of his mind. Wisps of thought that he cannot pin down and is not sure he should.

He has been too long without a wipe. He knows this, because as the time drags on, more things come back to him. Nothing concrete. No memories or names to go with the emotions, but he does know that this has happened before.

He knows with animal instinct that soon the pain will start.

There is programming in him that screams. Hydra can wipe him. Hydra can put him on ice and stop the pain. But this time it started too soon, this time the pain began with Rogers’ face and the wipe that followed had been incomplete and he had a thread to follow and something to anchor him and a way to find his way back. 

He leaves the city in a stolen car and drives west for as long as he can stay awake. Pulls into a motel and takes a room. Pays in advance. Barricades the door and turns on the shower.

Hopes that when it starts he can contain the damage.


	23. Friendship

Steve came to find him in their room. Bucky was cleaning his guns, had collected a few other things that he thought might be useful for the trip with Lady Jacqueline His Majesty’s First Lady Vampire and had them laid out on the tiny cot in their quarters. Wooden stakes, sharpened to a point. A hip flask of holy water, for her, another of whiskey, for him, to keep him warm if they were out more than one night. Steve leaned on the door frame, folding his arms, watching Bucky’s hands as he worked. He didn’t even need to look up to know that one of Steve’s eyebrows was cocked, that there was that damned look of concern in his eyes, that he was about to get a lecture about responsibility and friendship.

“I know what you’re gonna say Steve,” Bucky said, not looking up.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve heard it all before.”

The sheer presence of Steve as he moved through a room was something Bucky didn’t think he was ever going to get used to. The man took up more space, sure, but even when he was tiny and sickly in Brooklyn, even when he couldn’t walk a step without coughing or shuffling or doing some damned fool thing, you always knew where he was. He was like gravity for Bucky, easy to find, or to miss when he wasn’t there.

“So tell me,” Steve said, sitting on the cot across from Bucky. “Tell me what I’m gonna say to you.”

“It’s gonna be dangerous, Buck.” He didn’t hold back on the accent, or the pompous tone of voice, knowing precisely how much it was going to annoy Steve. “You gotta know that I’d go with you if I could. We can find someone else, Bucky, it doesn’t have to be you…”

“You know you’re a jerk, right, Bucky?” Steve said.

“Worked on it all my life, punk,” Bucky said, looking up and giving him a half smile. “Easy though, next to you. You bring out the best in me.”

“Sometimes I wonder if that’s true.”

“You bring out the best in everyone, Steve, you should know that by now.”

Steve took a long breath in and looked away, shoulders easing tension a little. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “Sometimes I feel like I bring out the worst, too.”

“Good becomes great, bad becomes worse, isn’t that what your doctor friend said?”

Steve shuddered. “Don’t joke about that.”

“Hey I saw Schmidt’s real face. Still kind of think you’ve got a red white and blue version underneath that manly jaw of yours.”

Steve laughed and looked down. “No, Buck. I don’t. I promise.”

“Well you’re better at hiding it than he was, anyway,” Bucky said, picking up one of the stakes and flipping open his knife to work on the point. 

“I wish it was someone else,” Steve said then. “Other than you, I mean. Who had to do this.”

He didn’t just mean Lady J. There were things Bucky had to do, things Phillips had pulled him aside and told him were his duty, things that Steve knew about but could never be told. “No one else could do it, Steve,” Bucky said. “And they don’t expect it from me, and that’s too good a weapon to leave lying about.”

Steve’s lip twitched. “You’re better than that,” he said.

Bucky laughed bitterly, shaking his head. He flipped the stake in his fingers, deft and sure and skilled. “No, I’m not,” he said. “Never was, buddy. You were the only one who ever thought it and you’ve always been wrong headed.”

“I couldn’t have been here without you, Bucky, you know that.”

_Why did he always bring that up as though it was something to be proud of?_

Bucky couldn’t wish it was otherwise though. Couldn’t look at Steve, the way he was now, breathing clear and healthy for the first time in his life, everything he ever wanted right there at his fingertips and Bucky _knew_ Steve was grateful to _him_ for _getting him here._

As if Steve wouldn’t have found a way on his own. As if Steve didn’t _always_ find a way on his own. “You would have done it without me,” he muttered. “Never could take no for a damned answer.”

Steve leaned forward and took the stake from Bucky’s hand, his fingers brushing Bucky’s as he did so. Steve was a furnace of heat, these days, just having him in the same tent was enough to keep them all warm on the road. Bucky could remember nights in Brooklyn when fifty blankets wouldn’t have been enough to stop Steve’s teeth from chattering with the cold, when the first frost meant weeks of coughing for his friend, but now, just having him brush skin with him was almost enough to make Bucky gasp and pull his hand back as though it had been burned.

He didn’t think he’d truly been warm since Austria. The fire of Steve’s heat, though? That couldn’t do anything but hurt him now.

“You always stand up,” Steve said. Sarah had always said that, even when she couldn’t stand up to save herself.

“No disrespect to your Ma, Steve, but she didn’t know jack about fighting a war.”

Steve chuckled. He didn’t take it the wrong way. He never took things the wrong way. Always thought the best of whatever Bucky was thinking. Bucky caught himself thinking horrible things about him just for spite. Maybe Steve could tell that even those thoughts lacked sting. He could think bad things about Steve Rogers, but that didn’t mean that what he thought was true. “I’d argue against that on a good day,” Steve said, then smirked. _“She’d_ argue against it _any_ day.”

There was a brief silence, both of them remembering Steve’s mom. It was funny, this far away from his own family — still alive and well and nasty as ever in Brooklyn, he’d bet — that Sarah Rogers felt more of a presence to him than they ever had.

Bucky took a breath.

“Look, Steve, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you wanting to look out for me but I can handle one crazy vampiric dame, it’s not like I don’t have experience in that regard.”

Steve’s laugh was a lot looser, this time. “Oh really?”

He looked up, glad to have finally chased the worries from his friend’s face. If he couldn’t smile for himself, there was always Steve. “You remember Marjorie Adams and that night after the damned Yankees game — “ 

“Oh hold it there, buddy, as I recall that was entirely _your_ fault and — “

There was a knock at the door and Steve and Bucky both looked up to find Jim Hammond, wringing his hands. Bucky found it in his heart to forgive the dirty look he gave him — there was no doubt the guy had it for Lady J and had it _bad._ It wouldn’t stop Bucky from driving a stake through her heart if he had to, but he didn’t have to not feel sorry about it.

“Lady Jacqueline says she’s ready now. Doc Horton says so as well.”

Bucky stood up, slotting the stakes into his belt and strapping it around his waist, holstering his gun. He held out a hand for the stake that Steve still held in his fingers. Steve seemed reluctant, at first, but Bucky shook his head, winked, and Steve sighed, stepping forward and slotting it into the empty place at Bucky’s belt.

“Look after her,” he said, then put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “And yourself. Okay?”

“Sure,” Bucky drawled. 

He didn’t wait to see if Steve followed him out.


	24. Negotiations

The trip back to the states cost Steve a few more trust points considering Jac refused outright to take a plane (she argued that Pete Wisdom would stop her at immigration) and Sam was forced to choose between land and sky transport for an option. Jac insisted that she could have carried both of them, but Steve wasn’t willing to trust her newly regenerated abilities so close to such a big loss and Jim was perfectly capable of carrying one extra. In the end Sam chose air, and arrived in New York slightly singed, glaring at Steve as though he was a fugitive from another dimension.

“You know they said you were the first superhero,” he said as they dumped their things at Steve’s apartment in Brooklyn. “From what I understood that meant until Dr Banner did his big green thing you were the _only_ one as well.”

“Times were different, Sam,” Jac said, smiling. She had insisted on not bringing _anything_ with her _the shopping is so good in new york, I need to check out the new Van Dyne line now that I’ve got my waist back!_ And was checking her hair in the mirror. 

Steve’s apartment in Brooklyn was pretty much what Sam had expected. Furnished like his dad would have liked to have the money to do their house in DC, browns and dark wood and soft colours. He would have thought he’d stepped right into the 1940s, if it wasn’t for the sophisticated home theatre system, the sleek laptop and the hum of the stainless steel fridge.

“I know time was different, Ms Falsworth, but you can move faster than I can fly and this guy _sets himself on fire.”_

“Actually it’s not quite like that,” Hammond said, smiling. “There are particles in my synthetic blood that ignite on contact with air, it’s not my skin that is burning, but a layer just on the outside that — “

“Look, man, you set yourself on fire, and I respect that. You don’t need to explain it to me.”

Hammond laughed.

Steve was, remarkably, checking his emails on his laptop. It seemed pretty incongruous, but then Sam should really stop thinking about Steve as someone who didn’t interact with technology all that well. 

“What’s the plan, Cap?” Jim said.

Steve’s mouth worked as he scrolled through whatever he had on his screen. He didn’t look happy, that was for certain. “We need to go see Tony,” he said.

“Tony Stark?” Sam said.

Jac gave a little grin. “Oh, lovely. I’ve always wanted to meet him.”

“Natasha found Bucky,” Steve said, pushing his chair back and moving to pick up his shield. 

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Sam said.

“I don’t know,” Steve replied. “She let him go, Sam. She tried to… “ Steve looked back at the computer shaking his head. “I don’t know. I think she thought she was doing the right thing. But I need to see Tony to make sure.”

Tony Stark. Sam could think of a few people who were less intimidating but not off the top of his head. Not easily any way. “Can’t we just see Nat?” Sam said.

Steve blew air out of his cheeks. “No. She’s gone. Told me not to look for her. Things to set right, she said.” He snorted a little. “Told me to trust her. Which. You know. I do. But.”

“But this is Bucky,” Jac said, kindly. Steve looked at her, expression open, like a lost puppy. 

“Yeah, Jackie,” Steve said. “You know it’s hard for me to be objective where he’s concerned.”

“Always was, always will be,” Jim said. “So why do we need Stark?”

Steve looked uncomfortable. “Because Natasha said he fixed Bucky’s arm,” he said. “And I know Stark, and there’s no way he would have done that without putting something in there that he could track.”

“Woah. Steve,” Sam shook his head, alarm bells going off all over the place. “That’s not going to help with your friend’s trust issues.” 

Steve gave a desperate laugh. “There’s not a lot I can do about his trust issues until he remembers who he is.” He looked up at Sam, and Sam’s heart melted a little, that he could have so much faith in a man who nearly killed him three times over and left him gasping on a river bank to be picked up by whoever thought he was worth it. Sam didn’t want to be the one to tell Steve that he was wrong, that they weren’t going to be able to help his friend, that his friend might not have to be stopped but might not be able to be saved.

Besides, he’d seen Captain America do the impossible once already. Who said he couldn’t do it again and again and four times over? 

Maybe this time Sam could do more than just watch.

“You know I’m gonna help with that, right?” Sam said. “We’ll get him back. Whatever there is left.”

 

Steve texted Tony that he was on his way and received a curt “sure” in response — at Stark Tower they were met at the door by a couple of guys in black suits who were very conspicuously bodyguards. They escorted them all up to the top floor, Tony’s private apartment, which had a god-shaped hole in the tiled floor. The guys in suits waited for a few seconds before disappearing back into the elevator. Obviously whatever Stark had been afraid of, it wasn’t Steve and three of his friends.

“You didn’t get it fixed?” Steve said, eyeing the floor as they came inside.

At the bar, a smallish, dark haired man with a goatee beard was pouring a quartet of drinks into glasses. It was currently only ten am and even though Sam’s jet lag had jet lag and it was probably drinking time where ever he last slept, he chose to decline when it was offered to him. Jim and Steve also declined but Jac took hers and grinned, downing it in one go.

Sam took this as a warning, what happens to you when you go from ninety to twenty in less than a day.

He couldn’t blame her.

“There’s a repulser field around it in case people don’t look where they put their feet,” Tony said, shortly. “Safety reasons, you understand. But I like having the reminder there. You know. That we beat a god.”

“I didn’t think you believed he was a god, Tony,” Steve said.

“Demi god. I didn’t think you were a pedantic asshole either but you know, me, always happy to be _wrong_.”

The tension in the air was bad enough that Sam didn’t even want to cough.

“Mr Wilson,” Tony said, holding out a hand to shake his, which Sam took. Tony didn’t seem to hold anything against _him_ at least, the smile that he gave him was easy and open. “I saw part of your act in DC, nice wings you had.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Unfortunately they’re out of commission now.”

“Steve’s buddy did a number on them, I know. I’ve been working on a few things since I saw them, you should drop by when you manage to ditch the old dude and I can wrangle a replacement.”

It took a moment for Sam to work out that Tony Stark was offering to give him back his wings. “Oh, no, I really couldn’t…”

Stark shrugged. “You’re practically an Avenger, it’s kind of my thing, also it’s not a nice thing to refuse gifts.” Stark’s eyes shifted to Jac and Hammond, narrowing a little. “You starting up a blonde collection, Cap?”

“Lady Jacqueline Falsworth-Crichton, and Jim Hammond,” Steve said. “This is Tony stark. A friend.”

Stark’s eyebrow twitched. 

“A pleasure,” Jac said. Stark’s eyes twinkled a little at that and he nodded at her, then looked at Jim, eyes narrowing. There was something greedy in that look that made Sam uncomfortable.

“I’ve read about you,” he said. 

Jim looked mildly surprised. “Really? Because you shouldn’t have been able to.”

“I’m usually pretty good at unearthing SHIELD secrets. MI13 is only a little bit trickier.”

For some reason this made Steve do his Jaw Of Destiny thing and stalk towards the window. 

“Well MI13 kept me secret for a reason, Mr Stark,” Jim said. “The technology that created me has never been successfully recreated.”

“Oh I know, I’ve tried,” Stark said. “I managed a LMD once but the stability was all wrong and it collapsed. I think the only real way to get it going is to give it an actual personality template to — “

Jim shook his head. “Really, Mr Stark, I’m not supposed to discuss this. Especially with you.”

“That’s what they did, isn’t it, though? Gave you a personality from someone else’s? And it _worked_ you’re not unstable or anything. I mean, you’re following Cap around on his damned fool mission to find his buddy but I know Cap has that cute smile and it’s hard to say no when he pouts…”

Steve interrupted. “Tony I know Tasha brought Bucky to you.”

Stark shot a look at Steve that was positively venomous. “ _Yeah._ Did she tell you the part where she zapped me unconscious after I _did her a favour.”_

Somehow that didn’t surprise Sam at _all._

“You’re tracking him, right?” Steve asked.

Tony fiddled with the glass in his hand for a moment then nodded. “Naturally. Jarvis can download a search program to your google maps app if you want to find him. Say hi from me. You can tell him thanks for killing my parents too if you want. Probably should do that _before_ you try to cuddle him though.”

Sam’s eyebrow twitched.

“Tony…”

Stark put the glass down on the bar top _hard._ “Steve. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know anything except what they programmed him with. I fixed the damned arm because it’s wired so hard into his nervous system that trying to take him out will kill him but he _might as well be dead already.”_

Steve moved so quickly that it was hard for Sam to intercept him, but he managed it, planting himself firmly between the two men. 

“This is _not_ going to happen, guys,” he said.

“I’m trying to _protect_ him Wilson, that guy is not James Buchanan Barnes and no amount of wishing from Captain Optimistic here is going to make that _happen.”_

Steve had stopped pushing against Sam — he would never, Sam knew this to his bones, Steve would never hurt someone else out of anger, he didn’t even think he’d been going to hit Tony just, possibly firmly tell him he was an asshole, but Sam didn’t like the way the tension went out of Steve he didn’t like that Tony was saying everything all of them had been thinking he didn’t like that Steve had that look on his face like nothing was ever going to be right again.

For Steve, Sam guessed, nothing had really been right in the first place.

 _Riley had disappeared without a sound. One second he’d been there, and the next, he was gone._  

Sam wondered if he’d feel the same as Steve did if the echo of Riley — someone who looked like him and sounded like him —  came back, but the man himself was gone.

“Step back, Mr Stark,” Jac said softly. One delicate hand was on Stark’s shoulder. Jim was on the other side of him. They hadn’t moved between the two men the way Sam had, but Sam got the feeling they knew more than he did (of course they did, everyone did).

“Howard wouldn’t want you two to be fighting about this,” Jim said.

Tony’s eye roll was hard enough to sprain something. “God, am I ever sick of hearing what _Howard_ would want.”

“I never thought you thought I was an _idiot,_ Stark,” Steve said, breathing hard.

“I never said you were,” Tony said, letting out a breath. “I just. I don’t think you’re not when it comes to this guy.”

“Did he hurt you, Tony?” Steve said, pushing back from Sam and giving him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder as he did so. “Did he threaten you? At all? The whole time he was with you, did he ever make you feel like he was going to turn on you?”

Stark made a face. “No. The only one who did the whammy on me was Tasha. Which I should have expected. There’s a story _there_ you know, those two know each other _way_ better than they should unless they had a couple of days in DC where they had a room or something…”

“Tasha met him on a mission,” Steve said. “In Iran.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“Tony!”

“Jarvis download the tracking program to Rogers’ phone and get these jokers out of here.”

Steve sighed. “I’m not going to let him hurt anyone else,” he said.

“Yeah I kinda knew that or I would have zapped him as soon as Nat brought him in,” Stark said. “I still think you’re an idiot though.”

Steve sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair, then nodded at Sam. “Thanks Tony.”

“Any time. By which I mean go away and don’t come back without your one armed buddy, okay?”


	25. Memory

The Winter Soldier tries to stave off sleep for as long as he can. He doesn’t have control over his dreams. The packet that Natasha gave him has painkillers, but he doesn’t know what they’ll do to him, doesn’t think they’ll work. Doesn’t trust drugs, in any case, thinks perhaps this is something that has always been the case, from before he was the Winter Soldier, from his time in the war when he had a name and a place and friends.

He sits on the floor of the hotel room, arms wrapped around his knees, watching the door. He remembers the display at the Smithsonian, remembers the face that stared at him from the picture, tries to capture who that person is, but there is nothing but echoes of missions, and the chair, and Pierce’s voice in his head.

Thinking about Bucky Barnes is not the way to his memories.

He tries the woman instead, the feel of her weight on his back, the look in her eyes when she told him “You’ve never learned to be anyone other than who you are,” the trust she had shown him, when he had done nothing to earn it.

It feels right, but it does not lead to memory. 

The Winter Soldier takes a deep, shuddering breath and closes his eyes, picturing the other face, the one he has been trying to forget. Jawline, like this. Spray of hair. Blood and a swollen eye, injuries that he is responsible for. A voice. _Then finish it. Because I’m with you till the end of the line._

The disgust that wells in his chest nearly makes him gag. He had held that life in his hands, a life he’d been charged to take.

Rogers had offered it willingly.

_What had they done to him, that he would offer up his life as though it was worth less than that of the Winter Soldier?_

The Winter Soldier’s shoulders shake. It takes him a long time to realise he is weeping.


	26. Sisters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay now we're heading to 1977 you remember I kind of mentioned that about sixty freaking chapters ago I SWEAR TO GOD this is going somewhere it's all planned out in my head. Also MARVEL CALL ME YOU KNOW YOU WANT ME TO WRITE A KICK ASS MIDDLE AGED LADY TITLE SET IN THE SEVENTIES I AM SO QUALIFIED *sobs in a corner*

In the winter of 1977 Jacqueline Falsworth-Crichton buried her husband.

The funeral was a dismal and dreary affair at Crichton manor. Kenneth, somewhat shellshocked and even less talkative than his usual fifteen-year old self, nonetheless comported himself well, giving a stirring speech to the assembled nobility. Jac sat still and tearless as the coffin was closed and moved to the private burial William had asked for. “I don’t want all of those fussy bastards watching me go under, Jackie, just you and Ken and your father, if you must bring him.” She smiled and said the proper words as people filed past on their way to the wake — she would need to make an appearance there for a few hours. 

Time dragged so mercilessly when one could not get out of one’s obligations.

“How’s Jimmy?” Jac asked her father as she wheeled him through the Crichton graveyard.

“Still thinks there’s a damned war on,” Lord Falsworth said, bony hands clutching at the arms of the wheelchair. “I sometimes think he wishes there was. Never shuts up about that fancy arsed Captain of his.”

Jac allowed herself a small smile. “Well not many people can claim personal friendship with Steven Rogers, daddy,” she said. 

Lord Falsworth snorted. “Never liked him much.”

“Liar.”

“That friend of his — the Sergeant. You liked _him_ didn’t you?”

“James saved my life, Daddy, surely you remember that?”

“You and that Torch fellow. Always thought you’d end up marrying him, not your pansy lord.”

“William was a good man,” Jac was pleased that Ken was out of earshot. Her father had very little pause between what he thought and what he said, these days, although to be frank with herself there had never been much of a pause to begin with. “Up and died on you too early, girl. Should have been with you till you were my age. Older. Looked after you.”

“I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, father. I always have been.”

“That’s what you always said, Jackie my love. I don’t know if you’re right any more.”

They arrived at the graveside. Ken was already there, as was Peggy Carter. Peggy gave Jac a kind smile and a nod, although Jac knew the real reason she was there — as a SHIELD representative, to make sure no one took advantage of Jac’s grief.

Jac and Peggy had an understanding, and a mutual respect, but not a great deal of trust. MI13 and SHIELD were never on bad terms, to be precise, but the intricacies of world politics left echoes and SHIELD’s reach and grasp was growing ever stronger as America waxed and England waned.

The burial went without any incidents. William’s death was not unexpected, and Kenneth and she had done their preparations long before this moment. Still it hurt to say goodbye, and she allowed herself the luxury of a few tears.

Her father took her hand as the first soil fell and Kenneth wrapped his arms around her waist. He was taller than she was. She didn’t know how she’d managed to miss that happening. Time passed and it took its toll and there was one more person in the ground she would never see again.

A tear dropped on her hand, the splash of it seeming uncharacteristically loud. The cock of the gun, however, was unmistakable. The sound of the bullet leaving the chamber far too familiar.

It had been ten years since she last used her powers, and it had been for the same thing — to save her son. She shoved him out of the way, moving too fast to be seen, but not fast enough to avoid the bullet in the shoulder. Jac gasped at the familiar pain — it had been nearly twenty years since she’d taken a wound and it was just as bad as she remembered. 

The smell of her own blood hit her even harder. Using her powers heightened her already heightened senses, her vampiric ones wanted to engage immediately. The smell of blood only made it worse. She snarled, fangs extending, tilting her head in the direction from which she knew the bullet had come.

A flash of metal, black leather. 

She ran.

It took a few seconds to sort out the speed which cost her. She knew Crichton lands, but not as well as she should — if it had been back on the Falsworth estate she would have known every blade and tree, but here she had spent less time exploring the woods around what was technically her own home, and more time entertaining William’s guests and caring for their son.

She had never had cause to regret that, until now. 

Other things she regretted: choosing the pencil skirt and high heels for funeral wear. The skirt ripped up both sides as soon as she started running, the heels were lost in the mud after the third step. She careered into a tree after a few feet, which exploded into splinters. Without her goggles it was difficult to see but she could still smell the leather and metal and gun smoke of the shooter. 

She wasn’t sure who he had been aiming for. The number of targets at the funeral were numerous, but the fact that they had waited until the burial meant that they wanted to kill her, Peggy, Kenneth or her father.

Any of those targets were unacceptable to Jac. The rage that boiled in her was deep enough to fuel the rapid healing of her shoulder wound, she was in danger of letting it take control. 

He was fast. But he wasn’t as fast as her.

She barrelled into him with enough force to level a regular person, but the fight didn’t finish there. A metal arm walloped her away and she hit another tree, the breath knocked out of her for a moment before she was able to give pursuit again.

No one should have been able to catch her off guard like that. In her whole life only one other person had been fast enough, and only because she had not been expecting it from him.

He was shedding weight. Weapons were dropping every few feet, but there was no way he could outrun her. She caught him and somersaulted over him, one hand gripping the leather of his vest and throwing him at another tree. He hit the tree and slid down, but there was no hesitation, no breath taken before he gathered himself to his feet, aimed at her again, and fired.

She dodged the bullet, but had to take her eyes off him to do so. When she turned he was gone.

Jac stood, as still as she could possibly be, and listened, and opened her senses. For twenty years she had left these senses untested, and she knew she was rusty, but she didn’t in all conscience think he could outwit her, not when she had the home advantage, not when…

The crash of feet through the woods broke her concentration and she spun on her heel to come face to face with Agent Peggy Carter. Six agents in suits were spread in a search formation in the woods around them — their noise and their scent covered any possible trace of the shooter. 

Jac had lost him.

“Goddamn it Margaret!” Jac fumed. “How many agents did you have out here?”

“As many as were necessary, Jacqueline.”

“I _had_ him!”

Peggy’s lip twitched and her breath left her in a soft laugh. “I’m sure you did,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. But we were under orders to protect you.”

Jac concentrated enough to get her powers under control and stood up straighter, conscious of the rips in the sides of her skirt, the lack of shoes, the cold mud seeping into her toes. “I’m hardly in need of protection,” she said. 

Carter holstered her pistol and gave Jac a friendly smile. “I don’t believe you are,” she said. “But Lord Falsworth and Howard Stark think otherwise.” Carter’s eyes were sympathetic. “You know how it is.”

Jac hissed a breath through teeth that were, thankfully, no longer fangs. “Yes. I suppose I do.” She gave one last sweep of the woods, shoulders slumping. “Are my father and my son all right?”

“Shaken, but hale,” Carter said. 

“Well then,” Jac brushed dirt from her skirt. “I suppose I should change before I make an appearance at the wake. Then, Agent Carter, I think we might have a few things to discuss.”

The other woman grinned. “I think that would be wise, Jacqueline.”


	27. Blood

They sat at a fire, keeping warm in the coldest part of the night. Barnes had cooked himself a small meal — tinned meat mainly, even though Jac knew for a fact he could have asked for a packed hamper from the chefs at Falsworth manor. Barnes seemed content enough with his fare, though, eating canned meat out of the tin with a pocket knife, watching her with ever vigilant eyes as he did.

She herself was not at all hungry.

“You spend a lot of time with women on your own, Sergeant?” Jac asked.

“Some.”

“You going to talk to me at all for this mission?”

He chewed deliberately. “Not if I can help it.”

“Do women intimidate you, Sergeant?”

He tilted his head, full lips turning at the corners. “Not yet,” he said.

Her eyes crinkled at the edges. “I know you met Margaret Carter.”

“Steve is a puppy in love,” Bucky said, his eyes also twinkling a little. He tossed the empty can near the fire, took a swig of water from his canteen. “But I don’t think she’s any more intimidating that your average dame. Not that she’s an average dame.”

“Do you think I’m an average dame, Sergeant?”

He leaned back, or at least, he looked as though he was leaning back. Jac knew he had his finger on the trigger of his pistol, and the stakes at his belt were close enough that he would be able to have one in his hand before she blinked at him wrong. “I think you’re dangerous.”

She chuckled.

The desire to take him, drink him dry, throbbed at her temples, but she knew she could resist it. She would not attack the man across from her, and if she did? Well.

She knew he would kill her if it came to that.

“Are _you_ dangerous?”

“I’m just a soldier, ma’am. So yeah, if you’re an enemy, I’m dangerous. Otherwise I’m just a guy who kills nazis.”

She leaned forward. “You’re Captain America’s closest friend,” she said. “You’re a survivor of Azzano, you were liberated in Austria from a Hydra facility which was utterly obliterated, for the past year you’ve been wiping Hydra off the map with extreme precision, I’d hardly call you “just a soldier”.”

The sergeant looked uncomfortable now. On the wind, in the night air, she caught a subtle shift in his scent. Away from the Captain it was stronger, somehow. Her questions had left him uneasy.

“That’s Steve,” he said. “Not me. I just go where he goes.” He let out a small laugh. “A lot slower.”

“Why?”

Bucky swallowed. Jac watched the movement of his throat. She realised if she concentrated she could hear the beat of his heart.

It was slow, and steady and strong, but whenever she mentioned the Captain it tripped up a few notches. 

“Because he’s a damned fool and he needs someone to watch his back,” Bucky said. 

“Come on Sergeant, I think if anyone else called the Captain a fool you’d be the first one to offer them a fist.”

Bucky chuckled. “Yeah. Well. He’s my friend, I’m allowed to call him a fool if I want to.” He looked down, taking a deep breath. “All the dames want to ask questions about Steve now. Funny how that didn’t happen before he was Captain America.”

Jac could feel the pull of the Baron’s blood tugging at her. If she were on her own she would have kept going without stopping, but concern for the sergeant had meant they made camp. He didn’t seem tired though.

“You sleep, Sergeant.”

“Not a chance, lady,” he said. “I don’t need much sleep and I have to keep an eye on you. You forced me to take this stop but as soon as we’re finished eating we’ll be moving out. The quicker we find the Baron the quicker I don’t have to stake you through the heart.”

Jac narrowed her eyes, then got to her feet. “Right then,” she said. “Tally ho. Off we pop.”

Barnes rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “English people don’t really speak that way, lady I know I’ve been bunking with your brother for months.”

“Jimmy never did enter into the true British spirit,” Jac said, winking. “Pack up your things, Sergeant. You don’t need sleep, I couldn’t even contemplate it, and we have a vampire to catch.”

 

She pressed him. Hard. She didn’t get tired, or didn’t feel it, and she could move faster than he could — a _lot_ faster, she was beginning to realise. The pace she set should have killed him, but he kept up with her. The slow, steady drum of his heart started to infuriate her and she found herself increasing the pace every mile, going faster and faster. Eventually Barnes was running with her at a jog. He kept it up for a mile or two before he grabbed her arm and shoved her against a tree.

He was breathing hard, but his heart hadn’t sped up at all.

Jac was only just getting used to her enhanced senses but she knew that at the pace she had set, for this long, he should have been dead on his feet. 

“Lady do I have to stake you here? We can’t go this fast. Not forever. Give a guy a break, will ya?”

“You’re lying,” she hissed at him.

“What?”

“You _can_ go at this pace. What did they do to you? Did they do _both_ of you in Erskine’s lab? Have you both got the serum? Are you America’s _second hope_ Sergeant Barnes?”

Barnes made a disgusted noise and shoved her away from him. “They didn’t do shit to me lady, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

She shook her head. “No. I can hear your heart, Sergeant. You’re keeping up with me and I know you shouldn’t be able to. I’m not stupid. Did one of the vampires bite you too? Are we both hearing the master’s song?”

“Screw you. I’m no vampire.”

“Then what are you?”

Barnes’ looked at her for a long moment. “What do you care?”

“I’m taking you to the Baron, soldier, and your General didn’t want Captain America anywhere near him for a reason. If you’re the same as he is, the Baron’s going to suck you dry and go on a rampage. If you’re a vampire, then he’ll enslave us both and you’ll end up handing your precious Captain to him on a platter. So, Sergeant. _What are you?”_

Barnes lips curled, then he shut his eyes and shook his head. “A lab rat,” he said softly. “A pin cushion. An experiment.”

Jac felt her heart lurch in sudden sympathy. “Were you a test subject for the serum? Did they try it on you first?”

Barnes laughed, a broken, bitter sound that cut her deep. “Oh, I’m pretty sure Stark had his own lab rats but I wasn’t one of them.” He looked down at his arms, then wrapped them around his chest. “Hydra did this to me. In Austria.”

“When your division was captured,” Jac breathed. 

Barnes nodded. “They had ah… a doctor. Zola. He…” Barnes stopped. “It doesn’t matter what he did.” Barnes shrugged. “There were injections. Other things. I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t and then Steve showed up and hauled my ass out of there and three weeks later I’m fully healed and running around like a goddamn super freak.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He looked up at her. “You probably think I’m ungrateful,” he said. “After all I’ve got everything that Steve has haven’t I? The strength and the speed.” He looked up, suddenly wide eyed. “Steve can’t know. Look lady, I’m gonna try to save you here, but if you even think about telling Steve about this I’ll…”

“Why don’t you want him to know?” Jac asked.

Bucky shook his head. “He thinks he has to protect me,” he said. “Makes his strategies so that I’ll be safe, but with him, you know how it is, thinks I’m the weakest one. And you know what he’s like — honest as the sun. They know he’s doing that. So they come at me and I kill them and I _keep them off Steve._ As long as he thinks I’m in danger he saves himself and as long as I’m near I can save _him._ He’d get himself killed the first ten minutes I wasn’t there to look after him. Thinks he’s invincible. Thinks he can…” Barnes took a deep, shuddering breath. Shook his head. Fixed her with his eyes. “He doesn’t need to know what they did to me.”

“He must suspect something,” Jac said. “You’ve been with him for more than a year now.”

“Of course he does,” Barnes said. “But he can’t ever know the specifics, and he can’t ever know my mission and he can’t ever stop being Steve Rogers. If you tell him I’ll kill you. Plain and simple.”

“What about the General? The other soldiers? What about your teammates?”

Barnes snorted. “If the General knew he’d ship me back to a lab, I ain’t going back into one of those. Not now, not ever. As for the commandos..” Barnes shook his head. “They won’t say anything even if they did know.”

He tightened his arms around his chest for a moment then shook himself. “We need to find this vampire of yours,” he said. 

“He’s very close,” Jac said. Turning her head. Sniffing the air. Something was wrong.

Something had been wrong ever since she started to push Barnes, she realised. “No,” she said.

“Lady J?”

“Oh god. I’m so sorry, Barnes.”

He looked confused. Came forward. Took her arm.

He was a _good man._

“What?”

Baron Blood stepped out of the shadows of the copse of trees they had stopped in. He was showing fangs as he smiled in the moonlight. “God, god, god help us,” Jac said, shaking her head, backing away. “What have I done?”

Barnes dropped her arm and stepped away. “She was stalling you, Sergeant Barnes,” Blood said, voice sibilant and oily and seductive. Jac shuddered. “Under my instruction of course.”

Barnes looked at her, face stricken. She couldn’t bear to hold his gaze. “Damn you!” he said. _You know what you’ve done. You’ve killed him. You’ve killed them all._

“Don’t blame her, Sergeant.” The Baron looked ordinary enough, when he wasn’t made of smoke, a tallish man. Dark hair. Dressed lightly for the damp cold English winter. Jac’s skin crawled even as she yearned towards him. “I am capable of being very subtle, especially when I have prior knowledge of what has been done to my subjects.”

Barnes was circling, trying to find a way to attack. Jac stayed still. “Prior knowledge?” The Baron gave a low laugh. “You slimy bastard. There’s a mole at the Manor.”

Jac’s eye twitched. She could feel the baron’s influence like a band around her chest, keeping her in place, but the news of a mole made her heart clench.

“It’s that doctor fellow, isn’t it?” Barnes said. “He looks at people as though they’re things. Wants to poke and prod and open them up. Typical damned Hydra.”

“It’s a simple equation, the sum of human desire,” Baron Blood allowed himself a small smile. “People desire things. Vampires? All we long for is the blood.” Blood turned his gaze on Jacqueline. “And your blood, Lady Jacqueline, has sparked a desire in me that I’ve never known before.” He smacked his lips and Jac’s stomach turned with real, visceral disgust. She gagged a little. “Come to me.”

“No.”

Barnes looked at her, hope blooming in his eyes. He had tried to free her from Blood the first time. Jac remembered him being thrown against the wall of the cells, before she’d been wrapped in darkness.

“You cannot resist me, Lady Jacqueline,” Blood said.

“You don’t know me, Baron,” she grated.

He stepped towards her. “I have tasted you,” he said softly. “I could not know you better.”

_You’ll get back to him Sergeant, I promise._

Jacqueline took a deep breath, extended her senses, and _moved._


	28. Capture

The Winter Soldier moves on towards Malibu. He knows where he was going now, and he knows why.

The bend in the Pacific Coast Highway, halfway between Malibu and Oxnard is notorious for car accidents, and Howard Stark drove recklessly, much like his son. It had not been difficult to place the small magnetic charge from his vantage in the bushes by the side of the Highway, twenty three years ago. It had been a simple mission, one that did not test his talents, quickly completed.

He had been returned to his freezer in less than ten hours. 

Standing, in the sunset, looking down at where the Winter Soldier remembers the wreckage of the car had been, he feels nothing. He searches for the reasons why he carried out his orders without question, but there is no answer.

When he had killed them, climbed down to the car to find Howard still breathing, still conscious, trying desperately to get to Maria, he had felt nothing. A simple twist of the metal arm, a look into blue eyes that were utterly unfamiliar to him that widened with recognition before becoming sightless.

There had been nothing then and there is nothing now.

He stands by the side of the road for what feels like hours before turning back to the motorcycle he had stolen. 

A man stands there. Hands in the pockets of a hooded jacket. He seems familiar. “I didn’t believe them when they told me you’d come here. Thought they were sending me away to get rid of me.” He gives a dry chuckle. “Obviously Rogers made you remember more than just his face, eh?” The voice is rusty. He takes a step forward and the Winter Soldier’s hand goes for a weapon. The man shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Can’t be having that, can we?” The Winter Soldier catches a glimpse of bared teeth before the man spits out a word. _“Sputnik.”_

_There is a sudden rush of anger, quickly overcome by relief. He doesn’t have to fight it any more._

The man gives him orders. 

The Winter Soldier does as instructed.

He has no choice.


	29. Targets

Kenneth went to his room as soon as they got home, muttering about SHIELD and privacy and Jac let him go. He wasn’t old enough to be included in the conversation she was about to have with Peggy Carter, but he thought he was, and she could feel the resentment boiling off him like steam.

It didn’t help that her senses were still jumping all over the place, or that her bones ached from using powers that she hadn’t since she was forty. 

“Are you all right, Jacqueline?” Peggy asked, sipping tea in the drawing room. Her father was snoring, gently, in his wheelchair, something for which both women were grateful. Without him listening in, they could speak more freely. 

“Getting old,” Jac said. “I haven’t used that speed since the sixties. The doctors say if I keep using it I’ll grind my joints into dust.”

Peggy winced. “I guess having super powers isn’t all it’s talked up to be.”

She shrugged. “I’m mostly mortal,” she said. “If I wasn’t then I wouldn’t be able to walk in the daylight. Not that I’d be given the option — Sergeant Barnes would have staked me through the heart back in ’44.”

“I never did get the run down on how that worked for you.” There was a slight Brooklyn twang to Peggy’s accent, these days, which made Jac smile wistfully. She knew why she’d settled there. There was very little for her here after all. 

“Let’s just say I get sunburnt pretty easily and I like my steak rare, shall we?” Jac said. “How are the kids?”

“Doing well, thank you,” Peggy said. “I’ll be pleased when they’re finished their studies, though.”

“Kenneth is thinking about going into medicine,” Jacqueline said. “Well, on the days he isn’t obsessed with comic books and that infernal noise he calls music.” There was a pause as the two women sized each other up. In the end, Jac figured she had the home advantage, and Peggy was never going to come out with what she wanted head on.

That had been her style, in the War. These days she was a lot more subtle. 

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Jac asked. “Or should I brew another pot of tea and we can dance around the issue for a few more hours?”

Peggy laughed lightly. “I always did like that you were blunt, Jac.”

“Symptom of being an aristocrat,” Jac said. “If you can’t shoot it or buy it it’s not interesting enough to waste time on.”

Peggy’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Very well. There have been a number of high level assassinations of… special persons lately,” she said. “Six dead. All active during the war and shortly afterwards. We think the Soviets are behind it.”

Jac cocked an eyebrow. “SHIELD is still obsessed with stamping out socialism? I thought the hysteria died with McCarthy.”

Peggy rolled her eyes. “Don’t pretend the British government isn’t neck deep in the same thing, Lady Jacqueline.”

Jac looked out the window. “I liked it better when we were destroying Hydra.”

“SHIELD has reasons to believe not all of Hydra was dismantled after the war.”

“Has reason to believe, or _wants_ to, Peggy?” Jac said. “Hydra died with the Red Skull. America doesn’t need to make excuses for why it finds the ideology of Eastern Europe offensive, we all know the real reasons.”

The other woman pursed her lips. “Regardless of my feelings on the matter we need to focus on the problem at hand. Our information suggests that the assassin sent after you today was the same man responsible for the deaths of the others. He’s specifically targeting people with enhanced abilities.”

“I didn’t think there were that many of us,” Jac said. 

“I know you have a few other colleagues at MI13 who would prove otherwise,” Peggy said. “But for the sake of relations, let’s not talk about Brian and Betsy Braddock.”

Jac shook her head. “Fine, then I won’t mention Isaiah Bradley,” Jac said. “Have you got a plan to capture this assassin?”

Peggy shook her head. “No. We want to find out who he is, and follow him back to his masters.”

Jac tapped a foot. “Let me know how that goes for you.”

Peggy leaned forward. “Jac, we need you to do it for us. None of us can touch him — he’s too fast, and he disappears too quickly. But you got his scent today, I know you did.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do that any more, Peggy,” Jac said. “The little I did today was enough to put me on painkillers for weeks.” She leaned forward. “You’ll have to do it yourself I’m afraid.”

“We have reason to believe Jim Hammond is his next target.”

Jac’s heart clenched. “Damn Peggy, you’re still as slippery as ever aren’t you.” She contemplated the last of the tea in her cup for a long moment, then shook her head. “Fine. I’ll help.”

 

Jim lived in a small town half way between Portland and Seattle. Jac hadn’t been to the states in years. Ken had thrown a minor tantrum when she told him he wasn’t allowed to come with her, but her father had set him straight and offered to take him back with him to the Manor. Jac figured she would move there when this business was over. Crichton manor didn’t feel like home any more with William gone, and her father needed more care than he was willing to accept from anyone who wasn’t family.

Jim hadn’t changed. It hurt, a little bit, and she was overly conscious of the spreading weight across her hips and stomach, of the grey in her hair and the lines around her eyes. He was working on a car in the mechanic shop that he ran on his own, and slid out from underneath to see her.

His smile — always so bright and open — settled some of the uneasiness in her stomach. “Jackie,” he said warmly, getting to his feet. Behind her, Peggy shut the door of the Buick they’d hired to drive the thirty miles from Seattle airport and Jim poked his head around, one eyebrow raising as he grabbed a rag to wipe the grease from his fingers. “Agent Carter. Here I was hoping this was a social call.”

“Sorry Mr Hammond,” Peggy said. “Official business I’m afraid.”

“What’s going on?”

“Someone’s trying to kill us, Jim,” Jac said. “And Peggy seems to think you’re next on the list.”

 

“Forgive me if I’m a little bit ignorant here, but bringing Jac right to my door when this assassin wants both of us dead seems a little bit stupid, Agent Carter.” Jim’s house was small and simply furnished, but comfortable. There would have been a time, not too many years ago, when she would have sneered at its simplicity. Now she simply smiled.

It was very Jim.

“We want to draw him out, Mr Hammond,” Peggy said. “And Lady Crichton volunteered.” Jim raised an eyebrow at her.

“I heard about William,” he said softly. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “Jim this isn’t going to be easy. The guy is faster and stronger than anyone I’ve come across since Steve died. You might have to extend yourself a little.”

Jim pursed his lips. “Tell me the plan, Jackie. I’ll do my best.”

Peggy gave them both a fond look. “You won’t be alone,” she said.


	30. Pleasure

Bucky had never seen anyone move as quickly as Jac Falsworth moved. Baron Blood reacted almost as fast — almost but not quite fast enough as it turned out. Jac left a trail of fire behind her which did not burn but was _not normal_ , and Bucky dived out of the way. He scrambled to pull a stake out of his belt, but couldn’t see any way to get in between the woman and the vampire. They fought like the stray cats had back in Brooklyn.

Jac couldn’t turn into smoke the way the Baron could, but it didn’t seem to matter. Every time the Baron dematerialised and rematerialised she was on him before he could make a move. 

They were too evenly matched and there was no way he could get between them in enough time to help. 

“Goddamnit. _Jackie.”_

The iron grip around his middle caught him off guard. The Baron had finally realised he was not going to prevail against Jackie head on, and had of course, gone for Bucky instead.

There was no way this was ending well.

Cold hands were on his neck and his head. Bucky knew enough about the Baron’s strength that he could snap his neck with one movement, or drink him dry in a second.

Bucky hoped he went for the former.

“Come now, Lady Falsworth,” the Baron said. “This is pointless bickering. You’ll tire eventually and I’ll have my meal, but if you want your friend to live you need to give yourself to me freely.”

Jacqueline was breathing hard. There wasn’t a scratch on her though. She tossed her head back and smirked. 

Damn but the girl had spirit. “That’s not going to happen,” she said.

“I’ll kill him.” 

“Baron. You’re going to kill him no matter what _I_ do. I know your type.”

“Very well. I will kill him if you come to me willingly. But if you don’t, I’ll turn him and send him back to his precious Captain America, and your father and your brother and your friends. And he’ll kill them. And that will be your fault.” The Baron leant down and sniffed at Bucky’s throat. 

“That’s real disgusting,” Bucky said. “You’re not my type.” Bucky gripped one of the stakes on his belt as he spoke. He didn’t have a lot of advantage here, and the chances were moving would get him killed, but at least if he was dead he couldn’t be the one the Baron sent against Steve.

But the Baron wasn’t listening. “My, my,” the Baron said. “What’s this? I thought the Captain was the only one with such a delectable concoction running through his veins. Have you been sharing, Sergeant?”

Bucky made a face. “Lady J, I’d appreciate it if you stopped worrying about me now,” he said. He tried to let her know what he was planning, just from looking at her. Her eyes moved down, saw his hand on the stake and she swallowed, giving the tiniest of nods.

“She likes you, Segeant,” the Baron said. “I can smell it on her. You like her too. No reason why you can’t both be together, forever, with me. All I require is a little service.” He licked Bucky’s neck. Which was, you know, _yuck._ “And some small liquid donations.”

“You won’t get _anything_ out of me,” Bucky said, putting a kick of bluster into his tone. 

“I’ve changed my mind Lady Falsworth,” the Baron said. “I shall consider your friend an appetiser.” Bucky felt the mouth open but there was no breath, which made it even more of a disgusting parody of intimacy. Moving as fast as he could manage, Bucky pulled the stake out and shoved it backwards.

He didn’t have the right angle and he wasn’t quite fast enough. The stake went in, but not all the way, and the Baron did not drop. Jackie, though, was faster. A blonde and green blur shot behind them and there was a sudden pressure on Bucky’s back. She’d pushed him forwards and they’d all three of them fallen on the ground, the force of Jackie’s speed pushing the stake the last inch to Baron Blood’s heart.

He didn’t even have time to scream.

Baron Blood exploded into dust all over Bucky.

“Awww fuck,” Bucky said, then winced, imagining Steve hitting him over the back of his head for swearing in the presence of a lady. 

A lady who was lying on his back. Sure there was a layer of dust between them but it was nice to have something warm and curvy that close and he turned his head to see Jackie grinning down at him with teeth that conspicuously lacked fangs.

“Sergeant you’re a man after my own heart,” she said.

He grinned back at her.

Then she kissed him.

It was a clumsy kiss at first — she was at an odd angle and his neck was bent so she couldn’t reach his whole mouth, but he didn’t complain. A little shifting and he managed to lie on his back with her straddling him, and he reached up and pulled her head down so he could do the job a little more professionally. She made a small sound as he did so and shifted closer, one of her hands running down his chest.

It was pretty obvious she’d done this before.

When she came up for air her eyes were twinkling. He cocked an eyebrow. “What was that for?”

“A thank you,” she said, still smiling. “For your assistance. Also you’ve been looking a little sad lately. Thought it might cheer you up.”

He shifted a little under her. “I like your style,” he said. 

She kissed him again. It was rougher this time, more intense and Bucky could feel himself willing to take advantages that Jimmy would probably slit his throat for entertaining. “Hey, I don’t know if this is the best…”

“Shut up Sergeant,” Jac whispered against his lips. “I suddenly feel the need to reaffirm my humanity.”

He grinned and ran his hands up her sides. “I’m not going to complain,” he said. “But you better not tell your brother or I’ll end up…”

She punched him lightly in the chest. “I’m keeping a lot of secrets for you Sergeant,” she said, pausing a little and looking down at him with a more serious expression on her face. “You can keep one for me.”

“You’re not a vampire any more are you? This isn’t some trick to get your fangs in my neck?”

“It’s not blood I’m hungry for, soldier.” 

He looked at her for a second. It was cold on the ground but where her body pressed into his there was warmth, and comfort. He reached up and tugged her hair free from its braid, letting one hand card through it gently. It felt good, the touch of another person, better than he’d felt for a long time. 

“I’m not sticking around here, Jackie. You know that. There’s a war on.”

She gave her little half smile and that was somehow sadder than anything he could have said. “I don’t want you to, Sergeant.”

His lips quirked up to match hers. “Just for fun, eh?”

“I didn’t think you’d be the type to worry about that.”

“I’m not.”

She cupped his chin in her hands, warmer now than they had been, then leaned forward and gave him a more thorough kiss, gentle, exploratory, and very human. “We both need this,” she said against his cheek, kissing down further, and there was dust and mud and grass but it was good — _so good_ to feel wanted in that way again. To feel like a person and not a thing or a job or a purpose. It was just him and her and their bodies and no thinking. Amidst the cold and the damp, Bucky cried out with something like pleasure for the first time in nearly a year.

Afterwards, she got up and buttoned her uniform, touching her hair and tutting. He pulled on his pants and shirt, more because he was cold than anything else. “You should tell him,” she said.

“Who?”

“Your Captain.”

Bucky’s heart thudded once, hard against his chest. “What?”

“About what they did. He’s going to work it out.”

Bucky ran a hand through his hair. “He’s Steve. He already knows. But if I tell him he’ll have to tell the general and you already know where that goes.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would he have to tell the general?”

Bucky shrugged. “He’s _Steve.”_ Jac raised an eyebrow at him and Bucky shook his head. “Look he knows. He knows I’m different but he’s not gonna say anything because if it’s out there, in the open, he’s got an obligation to tell the general. The serum’s gone. Erskine’s dead. If Phillips had had his way Steve would have spent the last year in a lab getting bled like a prize horse, but he’s done too much now and they need him out here more than they’ll ever need him as an experiment. Me though? They don’t need _me.”_ Bucky’s voice cracked with bitterness. “They’ll send me away. And Steve isn’t selfish enough to lie but he’s selfish enough to ignore the truth to make sure —“ _I don’t end up back on that table._

“You think protecting you is selfish of him, Sergeant?” Jac said softly.

Bucky winced and looked down. “We need to get back to the manor,” he said, brushing more dust from his clothes. “Who knows what that creepy doctor is up to.”

She looked at him for a long moment but he set his jaw and raised an eyebrow. She was a fine woman and a lot of fun, but she wasn’t going to dictate this to him. Finally she shook her head. Grinned at him. 

“Race you,” she said. Then shot off.

Bucky groaned.


	31. Ransom

The tracking device went dead near Malibu. Steve and Sam stood on the side of the road, looking down the cliffside. Jac and Jim kept their distance, Jac trying to work out if she could catch Bucky’s scent, Jim just not entirely sure if he could offer any help at all. 

Either Bucky had worked out that Stark was tracking him or someone else had. Either way, the trail was cold.

“He was moving two hours ago,” Sam said. “Or at least the tracker was.”

Steve swallowed, hard. In Zola’s basement, with Natasha, he’d seen the newspaper article about Howard’s death. He’d read the files afterwards, the kill order that they’d given for his friend and his wife. Bucky hadn’t been named but it was easy enough to read between the lines. 

If Hydra had led them here with the tracker in Bucky’s arm, they were laughing at them. Laughing at Steve’s failure to find him. His failure to save him. If Bucky had come here on his own — Steve didn’t know if that was worse or better. 

He turned, intending to get back into the car, drive somewhere, punch someone hopefully. 

Jac stopped him before he could get in. “Something’s going on in his head, Steve,” Jac said. “You know — you know Zola’s experiments —“

“Left him with the same sort of advantages I have, yeah, Jac. I worked that out.” He looked at her. “You knew too?”

She made a face. “He told me I wasn’t allowed to tell you, Steve.” Steve shook his head. _Jerk._ _We could have worked it out._ “If the serum is good enough to repair damage to his brain there’s a good chance he’s remembering more all of the time.”

Sam looked concerned. “That’s not necessarily a good thing,” he said. “He needs a stable environment if stuff’s going to start coming back. I mean. Just the stuff from when you were on the front lines would be bad enough but the dude’s got a _lot_ of other stuff in there that — “

So many other things. The file had been long, and brutal, and Steve had stopped reading more than once to get control of the rage it provoked. “I _know,_ Sam. We need to find him and we need to find him quickly.” 

They made their way back to the car, and as Steve was strapping himself in his phone rang. He didn’t recognise the number.

“Steve Rogers.”

“Long time no see, Cap.” _He knew that voice._

_“Rumlow?”_

The low laugh on the other end of the line was chilling not only because it was rusty and full of pain. “What’s left of me.”

“I thought you were still in hospital. You had burns…”

“Over seventy percent of my body, yeah. Not to mention two broken legs. Tell me is your pretty bird with you? I have some things to settle with _him.”_

Steve glanced over at Sam, who had one eyebrow raised.

“How did you get out of SHIELD custody?”

“I was never in it, Cap. You think SHIELD medics would have bothered to pull my body out of the Triskelion? Hydra though, we’re everywhere. _They_ looked after me. And then they gave me a mission.”

Steve’s blood went cold and he took a deep breath. “What do you want, Rumlow?”

“I want you, Cap. Hydra wants you. And your Falcon, although they’ve given me permission to rough him up a little first. I owe him that.”

“You have Bucky.”

Rumlow laughed. “I do. You know I think he’s even beginning to remember you. He definitely remembers _me._ ”

Steve swallowed bile. “Prove it.”

There was a shuffling and then Steve could hear the quick breath of another person on the line. “Bucky?”

In the background, Rumlow’s voice barked “Answer him.”

_“Rogers.”_

The last time he’d heard that voice it had been shouting at him. _You’re my mission._ Steve shut his eyes. “What have they done to you?”

But the phone is back with Rumlow now, and the dry chuckle that meets his question makes Steve clench his fist. “Nothing we haven’t done before. Unfortunately we don’t have access to his machines, not here.” There was a sharp noise, like a slap across the face, and a small grunt. Steve saw red. “Not since this one decided to lay waste to the last facility we had. But we can rebuild. There are a lot of Hydra cells left in Russia, for example.”

_“Let him go.”_

Rumlow laughed. “No, Captain. You’re going to come to me, and you’re going to give yourself up, and you’re going to do it because you know if you don’t your precious Bucky will die.”

Steve clenched his teeth. “I’m not handing you another weapon, Rumlow,” Steve said. 

There was a hiss of breath and a pause. “Huh. Well. The Clairvoyant was right.”

“About what?”

“He said you wouldn’t come just for the Soldier. I owe him ten bucks. Is Widow with you?”

“Why should I tell you that?”

“I bet she’s close. Keeping her eyes on you. They are always watching you, Cap, you know that right? Scared you’d go off the rails. Guess they got that right didn’t they?”

“Get to the point.”

“I suggest you give Natasha a call and ask her about trigger words. She can explain exactly what I can make your friend do before I kill him. If you won’t come to save him, perhaps you’ll come to save the people he’ll hurt?” 

“Wait. Rumlow — “

“I’ll text you a location. You better get there quickly, Cap, because if you don’t a lot of people are gonna die.”

The line went dead.

Steve swore.

“Jeez, Steve I didn’t know you knew that word,” Sam said, but the joke was half hearted.

“We need to call Tasha,” Steve said. His phone vibrated and Steve glanced at it, to see a text message. Rumlow wanted him to meet him in a carpark on the outskirts of Topanga in three hours. Far enough out to not be noticed by the general population. Close enough for Hydra and Bucky to do a lot of damage to a lot of people if it came to that. “And Maria Hill.” His brain was working overtime, trying to think of contingencies. Rumlow wanted them, they were walking into a trap, that they knew it was a trap didn’t make it any less dangerous. Bucky was there. Bucky was in Hydra hands again and the only reason he hadn’t been wiped was because they didn’t have the equipment.

No matter what happened, Steve promised himself Bucky wasn’t going to go through that again.

“Steve you need to take a breath and tell us what’s going on,” Sam said. 

“We need Tasha. And Clint too if he’s with her. And Maria and Tony and anyone else who has firepower. I’m going to have to walk in there alone but by God I’m walking out of there with Bucky if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Steve.” Steve looked at Sam, who had one hand on his arm. “Let me drive, okay? You make those calls. We’ll get him back, I promise. Just breathe.”

Steve did that, trying to calm himself. It worked. A little. “Let’s do this.”


	32. Peace

Rumlow is nervous. The Winter Soldier sits, cross legged on the ground. It’s hot here, especially in the sun, but the Winter Soldier isn’t dressed in his full uniform any more. A simple, short sleeved shirt and pants. Canvas shoes. He holds the metal arm in his lap, keeping it in the small shade offered by the car he sits in front of, and his own body. That shade will not last long, and when it goes the arm will begin to heat up.

The Soldier knows he doesn’t have that much time, so this does not bother him.

Rumlow made him give up all his weapons, which are sitting in a pile near him, waiting for the second trigger command. There is a vehicle, two steps beyond the weapons. The Soldier knows where the targets are — knows precisely how much damage he will be able to do before he is taken down by whatever passes for SHIELD these days.

He can only hope that Rogers will see there is little point in rescuing him now. The Winter Soldier expects for a shot from afar. The woman, Natasha, is a competent sniper. Her partner, Hawkeye, is even better, and an arrow to the chest would not be a bad way to go.

In his mind, images swirl. The train. Pierce. Rogers. Ice and death. The trigger word is like a dam holding back a flood of memories that will fracture any control he has managed to scrape together and the Winter Soldier doesn’t know if he should be taking comfort from it’s restriction or railing against it.

There are Hydra agents at strategic points along the highway. Hydra agents in the town. But something else is happening. Rumlow has been in communication with another person on and off since he made the Soldier talk to Rogers and the Soldier can hear snippets of talk every now and then that he knows he should care more about.

_What do you mean Ward’s been compromised who —_

_I don’t care what the Clairvoyant wants he’s not the man in charge —_

_I don’t work for you I work for him and so do you and you’re —_

The Soldier had known, when the carriers crashed, that Hydra would not fold. It was part of the reason he’d run. But Rumlow’s more frequent and more urgent conversations made him think that perhaps Hydra was beginning to crumble in ways they had not foreseen.

It is cruel but not surprising, to give him a sliver of hope when he is waiting to die.

His sense of time is still perfect. There is an hour and fourteen minutes before Rogers is due. The sun on his back is warm and he focuses on that warmth, waiting for the shot. Waiting for Rogers. 

He feels peaceful.


	33. Brittle

Jac Falsworth can remember the first time she saw Jim Hammond “flame on”. In 1943, during the business with Baron Blood that had given her her powers (and her secondary vampiric nature) Jim hadn’t had much to do with his flame. The one time he’d used it in anger she’d been unconscious, most of her body’s blood supply in the belly of the monster who’d nearly killed them all. 

No, she’d not seen him become the Human Torch until a few months after that, during a mission in the south of France. It had been devastating, and Jim had been a wreck afterwards. The civilians whose homes he had destroyed had been evacuated, but it hadn’t stopped him from feeling the full force of his actions.

Jim didn’t like his powers. That was the reason he was buried in this town in the north of america, fixing cars and trying to be normal. Reaching for the humanity that he’d always believed was out of reach. 

“We need to get out of the town,” he was saying to Peggy. “I can’t have these people put in danger because of my presence, Agent Carter…”

“Mr Hammond, we have agents in place, and contingency plans to make sure no one is hurt. The Soldier is efficient and does not like to be seen, in my experience he attempts to kill from a distance. You’re more in danger here than anyone else in the town. He will want to avoid detection. All we need to do is wait.”

“Until he shoots me? Look I may be synthetic but I’m not that happy about taking a bullet through my vitals.”

“You won’t have to, Jim,” Jac said. “I’m going to find him before he gets close enough to take the shot.”

Jim gave her a look. “Jackie, you’re not — you said you couldn’t use your powers any more.”

She put a hand on his arm. “This is important, Jim. You’re important. We don’t want you hurt.”

Jim looked at Peggy. “Why is he targeting us Agent Carter?”

“I’m afraid we’re not certain, Mr Hammond,” Peggy said. “We can make some educated guesses. The soviets would very much liked to have had their own super soldier program, we knew that during the war. Anyone with abilities beyond the ordinary pose a threat. You and Lady Crichton have proved on more than one occasion where your loyalties lie.” Peggy made a face. “There are others who have not been so steadfast in their loyalties. As yet they have not been targeted.”

“You think this is a soviet plan to make sure the allies are down… “ Jim shrugged a little. “Allies.”

“If they were to wipe out the two remaining Invaders I can imagine it would do a lot to increase morale.”

“You don’t believe all this, Peggy,” Jac said, frustrated. 

“Whether I do or not is immaterial, Jac,” Peggy said, sighing. “The fact is, we have drawn our line, and the assassin is on one side of it, and you and I and Mr Hammond here are on the other. If we’re going to stop him, we need your help.”

Jac sighed. “Fine. I better get my nose into gear. Jim, you stay with Peggy and stay _safe.”_

“Where are you going, Jac?”

“The roof.” 

“I should come with you…”

“Don’t be silly, Jim, this is your home town. People will talk.”

She grinned at him over her shoulder and left, making her way to the roof of the small house.

From here she could look out over the town, catch different scents on the wind. She sat there for a good ten minutes before she heard Peggy climb up to sit with her.

“I hope you didn’t leave Jim on his own, Director.”

Peggy smirked. “Jim has three agents with him. He’s complaining about it, but he’s safe.”

“Why the subterfuge? You’re not just Agent Carter any more.”

“We’re all agents,” Peggy said. “I suppose I miss the times when I was more active on field duty. Still, I probably shouldn’t have attempted to hide my real title from you.”

“There’s no way you would be anywhere but in charge of SHIELD, Peggy, it was where you were always supposed to be.”

Peggy sat, smiling. “Unfortunately your opinion wasn’t shared by most of my colleagues when I was first appointed,” she said.

“Most of your colleagues, Director, were idiots. I suppose you wheedled most of those out though.”

“It took time. But yes. There are a few who still make grumbling noises every now and then but Howard and I can deal with them.”

The wind changed and Jac lifted her head, testing for scents. “How long do you think this will take?”

“We didn’t hurry here,” Peggy said. “The town’s been under surveillance since before you were attacked. I don’t think it will be longer than a day, probably less than that.”

“Any chance of a cup of tea?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

 

The night had a lot of scents that Jac found familiar, and unfamiliar. It had been some time since she’d stretched her vampiric powers to the limit, and there was a thrill to it, as she shut her eyes and tried to sort through all the sensation.

Woodsmoke, someone cooking apple pie, the smell of human waste and illness, homelessness. Sweat and oil. The peculiar smell of Jim’s inorganic blood that sang to the blood in her own veins, activator of her powers. Peggy Carter, tense and anxious and competent and…

…There.

A familiar scent. More familiar than it should be. She frowned, sitting forward, trying to catch its exact location. There was leather, and sweat, and metal gears mixed into a smell she recognised on a much deeper level than she should have. It was wrong, though. Twisted. She had a jumbled mix of memories trying to surface — pain and hunger, ash and dust, and a touch of arousal. 

That was odd. But she didn’t have enough time to follow it up. He was moving towards her, towards the town, and if she wanted to protect Jim she was going to have to act fast.

“Peggy I’ve got him,” she said into her communicator. Then she ran.

It didn’t hurt while she was running, that was never going to be the problem, it was the stiffness and soreness when she got there that would be dangerous. She couldn’t let herself think about that, though, not as she weaved and dodged past houses and traffic.

The soldier was moving fast — not as fast as she could of course — and he was alone. The woods surrounding the town were a good place to hide, an excellent way to approach the town unseen, but to get to Jim he would have to move in the open. He’d picked a good time — such a small town closed up its doors hours before and there was no one to see him, but he was a professional and he kept to the shadows. 

Jac had never been a particularly subtle person, and she didn’t see any reason to start now.

The burst of speed was enough to slam him into the wall of a service station. She didn’t make the mistake of staying close to him. The fight in England had shown her that, much like fighting against any man who had greater strength than she did (Steve came to mind, and some of the more well trained Hydra agents she’d gone up against during the war) getting close to him was a bad idea. No matter how fast she was, if he managed to get a grip on her, especially with his metal hand and he would be able to keep her still.

He wore a mask covering the lower half of his face. She could clearly see the metal arm, a red star painted on its shoulder. She could sense the point where flesh and metal met, and it made her crinkle her nose — this was not a delicate operation done to help a man with a disability, this was an instrument of blunt force, and as he grabbed her with it and threw, she had a second to wonder if it caused him pain.

She’d gotten too close, in her curiosity, and paid the price.

Hitting the wall and leaping back towards him cost her a lot. Peggy and the other agents would be on their way, she didn’t have to distract him for too long, just long enough to cause some damage so the agents could track him when he fled.

She sped around him, landing punches as he tried desperately to fight back. There was a crack as she kicked his knee out from under him and he fell forward. Giving a crow of triumph she barrelled into him, intending to pin him underneath her and keep him there until the agents arrived, but she misread him. He’d been faking. As she hit his chest he flipped forward, using her own momentum to slam her on her back. She felt the bones in her arm crack in his metal grip as he grabbed her throat with his other hand. She looked up into dark, goggle covered eyes, messy, unkempt hair framing the masked face.

There was something familiar about him, she thought, waiting for him to finish her off. About the position they were in. The weight of him on her.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been this close to death, but it was the first time she felt something less than rage for the person attempting to kill her. 

They stayed like that for a long moment, before he gave the smallest of head tilts. The flesh hand around her throat loosened. She should have fought back then, but the pain in her arm and the rest of her joints had nailed her to the ground. She was spent.

The voice was muffled by the mask. “ _мчаться вас там_ ,” he said. She didn’t speak Russian. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t killing her.  

She was unconscious when he fled.

When she woke she was in Jim’s bed. Her arm was plastered and every joint ached. Blinking, she looked across to see Jim sitting, leaning forward, face drawn with worry. “Jackie?”

She reached out a hand, wincing. “Did you get him?”

Jim shook his head.

“Damn.”

He took her hand gently. “Jackie you didn’t need to do that for me.”

She huffed a laugh. “Don’t be stupid. We’re friends.”

He smiled. She tightened her grip on his fingers. 

 

_Men talked. From his chair, sitting passively, the Winter Soldier listened._

_“I’m telling you, we can’t send him on missions against people he knows. The memory wipes aren’t sophisticated enough.”_

_“He spent less than a month with her thirty years ago!”_

_“Enough time to form a connection. I don’t know why you think it’s so important for him to be the one. We can send any number of other agents…”_

_“We’ve tried other agents. They fail.”_

_“If you could just replicate the serum..”_

_There was a sudden movement, and a blow. The Winter Soldier is somewhat surprised it is not directed at him._

_“We have tried. You have seen the results. He is our only success.”_

_“Dr Zola’s work —“_

_“Does not come close to Erskine’s. It’s been proved over and over again that the serum’s effectiveness is contingent on the subject who receives it. Wipe him. Freeze him. He’s been compromised and we cannot risk using him again for some time.”_

_“As you say Comrade Lukin.”_

_“Call Pierce. Tell him the experiment was unsuccessful. I’ll deal with the Baron.” The man looked at the Winter Soldier coldly. “Put him back into freeze.”_

 

There was talk. Peggy wanted to put both Jim and Jac into protective custody somewhere in America but Jac point blank refused. Jim simply stood there, helplessly, until she finally poked him in the foot with the cane she was using to walk. “You’re coming back to Falsworth manor with me, Jim,” she said. 

“What?”

“We can protect ourselves. With the help of MI5. And you’re miserable here. Keep a woman company in her old age.”

“Jackie I…”

He agreed in the end. She’d always known he would.

There were no more attempts on their lives, at least not from the man they came to know as the Winter Soldier. Rumours reached her, over the years, that he was behind several other assassinations. It never sat right with her. She could remember the tone of his voice — curious and confused — as he’d spoken to her in Russian. 

It was only forty years later, in a hospital room with Steve Rogers, that she remembered what he’d said. Had the tools to translate it. Realised what he’d meant, why his scent had been familiar, why he couldn’t carry through with the assassination.

James Buchanan Barnes.

_мчаться вас там._

_Race you._


	34. Traitor

Bucky cursed, trying to catch up to Jackie as she sped ahead of him. “I thought you weren’t a vampire any more!” he shouted. She slowed to a jog and let him catch up to her, laughing.

“The hunger is gone,” she said. “I can’t hear Baron Blood since he’s become a cloud of dust. But the speed? I think that came from something else!”

“Something other than vampires? I gotta get a new line of work.”

She shrugged. “It might wear off,” she said. “So we should use it to get back to the manor as quickly as possible, no?”

Bucky swallowed. He was more tired than he cared to admit — the march to get to Blood, the brief fight, their interlude after the brief fight had tested the limits of whatever Zola had done to him. “I hate to admit it but I’m worn out, Jackie.”

She gave him a positively delighted grin. “Did I break you sergeant?”

“Screw you.”

She didn’t even bother to answer that one, but her expression softened. “Do you need to rest?”

“Not for long.”

She tilted her head, contemplating him for a moment. “How much do you think you weigh, Sergeant?”

He frowned. “What?” She came forward and put her hand on his chest. “Look, Jackie, we definitely don’t have time for more of that. And I thought we were talking about me having a — ”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence, as she pulled him close. There was a little bit of fumbling as she found the right position during which Bucky could do very little except make confused noises. “There,” she said. “Hold on to me tight, Sergeant, this is going to get a little windy.”

 

She didn’t slow down until they reached the grounds around Falsworth Manor — which was in less time than he thought it would have taken them to _fly_ there. His eyes were streaming and his arms hurt like fire from where he had been holding on to Jackie’s shoulders but they were back and they’d made it and Steve would be there waiting for them. Bucky felt like he’d been separated from him for weeks when in fact the sun was only just rising over the horizon of the second day since they’d gone after Blood.

Jackie set him down and he stumbled a little before squaring his shoulders. She grinned at him and he scowled at her, brushing down his uniform (which was still covered in dust and drying mud and leaves). “You look disgraceful, soldier,” she said. He poked his tongue out at her and she laughed.

The laughter faded on her lips as she turned back to the manor. “It’s going to be hard to convince them that the Doctor is a traitor,” she said softly. “He’s been working with us for months and I know father trusts him.”

“We have it straight from the Baron’s mouth,” Bucky said.

“Well, not exactly,” Jackie said. “You inferred. There isn’t any real proof. And the Baron is dust.”

“I’m pretty sure we can find some if we dig hard enough. No one is that good at being someone else.”

The doors opened and Bucky saw Steve and Dernier approaching — obviously the soldiers at the front gate had radioed that they’d returned. “Bucky,” Steve gave him one of his warmest smiles. “I knew you’d do it.”

Dernier said something in French and Jackie replied — Bucky caught about one word in six — usually Dernier was easier to understand than that but Bucky was willing to bet he was using far less swear words than normal in the presence of a lady. He caught enough to know that he was asking her if she was still thirsty for blood. She had a cheeky grin on her face as she replied and Dernier’s lip twisted. He understood more of what Jackie said — she had no such restrictions when it came to profanity.

Steve, with his perfect recall and rapidly increasing lexicon of languages (Bucky had discovered only last week that he could now even speak _Russian_ goddammit) blushed. 

“We’ve got a problem, Steve,” Bucky said. “And I’m gonna have to talk to you about it in private.”

 

“You’re sure of this, Bucky?”

“Jackie will confirm what he said. And it makes sense. You’ve seen how creepy he is around Hammond — I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to take him off to some laboratory and suck his blood out to see if he can replicate what happened to Jackie with everyone else…”

“Dr Horton _created_ Hammond, Bucky.”

“Yeah and my Dad had a lot to do with making me but that doesn’t mean he’s my favourite person in the universe. Parents don’t own their kids and I’m pretty sure Dr Horton thinks he owns Hammond and as far as I’m concerned even if he _isn’t_ Hydra that’s a good enough reason for him to be put in jail.”

“Your dad was a good man, Bucky.”

“Before the fifth shot, sure,” Bucky said glibly. “Look, Horton is Hydra, the Baron confirmed it, if we can’t prove it we can at least put a watch on him. He’s smart but he’s one of those guys who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and I know at least one person in this room who’s got more brains than him.” Steve cocked an eyebrow and Bucky rolled his eyes. “It’s you, Steve, I think _you’re_ smarter than him.”

Steve’s lips quirked. “Don’t sell yourself short, Sergeant.” 

 

They held a briefing going into the details of what Bucky and Jackie had done (leaving out the salacious details). Bucky kept his eyes on Horton throughout, watching for signs of him being surprised or upset.

He was good, Bucky would give him that. A slight shift of his gaze towards Hammond when Bucky told them that staking Baron Blood had cured Jackie of the craving for blood. A gleam of greed in his eyes when Jackie told them that she still had her super speed (Bucky’s fist clenched under the table at that and he glanced at Jackie who, smart girl that she was, gave him a wry twitch of her eyebrow). 

“We had no attacks last night,” General Austen was saying. “Only those vampires who have killed will still be active, it should be an easy enough job to get rid of them now they have no organised leader.”

“What about Hydra?” Jackie asked. “We can’t ignore that they wanted to use the vampires for something. Baron Blood talked about having allies. About Hydra giving him what he wanted. But he didn’t tell us what they wanted from _him.”_

“I’m good at hunting down Hydra,” Steve said, smiling a little. “If they’re still here, I’ll catch their scent.”

“Oh I doubt they’ll bother sticking around here any longer,” Dr Horton said. “Without Blood as a source for new vampires they’ll find something else to occupy their time.”

“I for one would be very happy if they suspended operations around Falsworth land,” Lord Falsworth said. 

Horton stood. “Does this mean you’re going to allow me to have my assistant back?” Horton said. “I have a lot of work to get back to, and I need Jim to…”

Jim shook his head. “Actually, Doctor, I was meaning to talk to you about that.”

Bucky glanced at Steve. This was the rub. If what he and Jackie suspected about Horton was true, this was where the tipping point would be.

Horton frowned at Hammond. “Yes?”

“The Captain has offered me a position. With the Commandos. I’m inclined to accept it.”

There was a slight flaring of Horton’s nostrils. His teeth clenched. “You want to be a soldier, Hammond? A grunt, like Sergeant Barnes here?”

Bucky nearly laughed at that. 

“I would be lucky to be as valiant as the Sergeant, Doctor, but yes, I want to do something a little more hands on for this war than be your assistant.”

Horton looked at Steve, eyes narrowing. Bucky could see him judging, whether or not to argue the point, and Bucky wasn’t surprised when Horton was the first to break the gaze, shrugging, as though it meant nothing to him.

“Your life is your own, Jim,” he said softly. “And you know I will always be willing to help with your systems, should anything go wrong.” Horton pushed back his chair. “I do not believe you require me further, gentlemen. And I have some packing to do. Jim if it’s not too much to ask before you leave my company, perhaps you could help with some of my instruments? You know them as well as I, after all.”

Hammond, who looked a little surprised at Horton’s mild tone, nodded. “Of course Doctor. But you surely… don’t have to leave right away.”

“No time to waste. The war won’t be won with idleness, my friend.” Horton gestured for him to follow and the two left, talking quietly to each other the whole way. Bucky, with a small nod from Steve, excused himself from the table, Jackie following close behind. 

“I’m trying to be covert here, Jackie,” Bucky hissed to her as they followed, a fair way behind Horton and Hammond.

She bopped him on the nose with one finger. “Jim is important to me, Sergeant,” she said softly. “And you need my help.”

He ground his teeth. “Fine. Stay back. This could get ugly.”

She rolled her eyes.

 

Horton may have been smart, but he must not have suspected that his cover was blown, because he didn’t wait. Bucky walked into the laboratory, a jaunty whistle on his lips, to find Jim lying in a coffin-like case, obviously deactivated, and Horton talking into a communicator.

Bucky leaned back out of the door and nodded to Jackie who disappeared faster than he could follow to get Steve, then he leaned on the doorframe and nodded to the Doctor.

“Doc, is Jim having a sleep?”

Horton looked up, pausing in his communications, and gave Bucky a disgusted look. “Get here fast,” he said to the communicator. “If you want the android reactivated you’re going to need me.” He tossed the communicator onto a bench and drew a pistol, pointing it at Bucky, who shrugged. “You and your interference,” he said. “Ends here.”

“Are you going to shoot me Doc?”

“Eventually. Although I’d prefer to wait until Hydra gets here so you can watch your friends die.”

“Seriously? You know that’s not gonna work out for you.”

“You and your Captain have made friends with my Jim here, haven’t you? Not very sporting, though, to use him as bait. Especially when I know more about him than anyone else _including him._ ”

There was a yellow streak of flame and Horton’s gun was suddenly gone. Jackie was suddenly standing behind him, the gun pointed at his head. Horton hissed, shaking his hand in pain. “What have you done to Jim?” she said, softly and menacing next to his ear. Bucky admitted to being a little turned on by her tone. 

The sound of gunfire outside distracted him. Horton allowed himself a satisfied smile. “Hydra will crush you,” he said. Jackie shook her head, then clocked him over the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.

“Tie him to a chair or something, Sergeant. When he wakes up and his Hydra lackies are all dead, we’ll convince him to reactivate Jim.”

“What are you planning to do in the meantime?”

She gave him a feral grin. “Fight of course.”

She sped out, leaving Bucky to heft the doctor into a chair and secure him. “Steve we’ve got Hydra incoming,” he said.

“We noticed, Buck. Is Hammond okay?”

“The Doc deactivated him, but he’s in custody. We’ll make him wake Jim up when he recovers from what Lady J did to him.”

“What did… never mind. We could use your help out here Buck.”

“Really?”

“It looks like Hydra really wants Doc Horton back.” There was an odd sound coming through in the background, that sounded a lot like gears and metal grinding against each other.

“More of those guys with flamethrowers?” Bucky said, tightening the last of the ropes around Doc Horton. A couple of SSR girls arrived, heavily armed and looking at least as competent as Jackie and Bucky nodded to them to keep guard over Horton and padded out towards the fighting.

“A little bigger than that,” Steve said. He sounded slightly out of breath and Bucky heard the clang of the shield hitting metal.

“Be right with you.”

He jogged out to the front of the manor and skidded to a halt. “Holy Jesus,” he said.

The metal and gears sound belonged to a behemoth of… metal and gears. It was taller than the manor. 

Steve was a tiny dot halfway up the arm of it, and the robot? Monster? Robot monster?? Was using its other hand to try to swat him off. The Commandos were swarming around its enormous feet firing at it, and Bucky had an irrational moment of terror that they were going to hit Steve. The behemoth wasn’t the only problem, though. SSR troops were picking off a swarm of Hydra soldiers attempting to attack the manor.

“Where did they _come_ from?”

Jimmy Falsworth, currently picking off Hydra soldiers with his sidearm, jerked his head to get Bucky to join him. “Father thinks Lord Underhill’s been conspiring with the Nazis since the start of the war,” he said. “My guess he had these stashed in his basement. They all burst out of the ground about five minutes ago, my bet is they were waiting for a signal from the doctor. Tunnels under the ground. Father is livid with rage, they destroyed a Capability Brown landscape when they came out.”

Bucky pointed at the metal monster Steve was currently climbing like a monkey. “Where did he stash _that??”_

 _“That’s_ a little bit more difficult to explain.”

“What’s Steve doing?”

“There’s some guy inside, driving it,” Gabe said. “Cap’s gonna open up the lid and pull him out. I’m pretty sure he said something about giving the whole thing to Stark as a present.”

“God, like Stark needed more reasons to love him,” Bucky said. Someone handed him his rifle and he knelt to get better, steadier aim, and started sighting targets. 

There was a shudder though out the monster and a scream as a man flew out of it. Bucky heard Steve give a whoop through the comm — exactly the tone of voice he’d had when the WPA had accepted him back in Brooklyn “we can afford that place now, Buck!” before there was a thud and he shouted into the comm. “Gonna turn this thing around and give the other side some grief, fellas, try not to shoot at me any more?” 

The metal monster laboriously started to reverse directions, and the Commandos and the SSR stopped firing at it, instead concentrating on the suddenly panicked Hydra soldiers.

Bucky shook his head, laughing as he found his next target. The Commandos were cheering, a yellow streak of fury that was Jackie Falsworth was zipping in and out of the enemy lines, flattening soldiers with nothing but the wind of her speed.

It was pretty straightforward after that.


	35. Assemble

Steve could see Bucky and Rumlow from a long way off. Of course, they’d picked a position that was elevated, so that Rumlow would be able to see far enough around to spot any support Steve had. Sam was close by — a specific requirement of the agreement that had made Steve twitch. It wasn’t enough that they wanted to rip his past away from him again, his future had to go as well. Sam was wearing the best kevlar Natasha could find, upset and sweating but willing to let Steve strap him into it. 

Steve knew he was protective, knew he was being both unreasonable and not nearly paranoid enough, but if he came out of this with one fewer friend — just one — he would never forgive himself.

If Rumlow had hurt a hair on Bucky’s head he was going to wish he’d suffocated and burned in the wreck of the Triskelion. 

Steve could hope a lot of things, as watched them through the binoculars that Stark had given them. He could hope they didn’t know that Tasha and Clint each had different lines of sight on the carpark (too far for Steve’s comfort). He could hope that they didn’t know Jackie had been restored to her full powers (she was out of sight, more than five miles west of their location, a distance she was able to cover in less than five seconds). He could hope that Bucky’s triggers didn’t involve killing on sight, or not attempting to protect himself from harm should there be a fight. 

He could hope that Rumlow wasn’t entirely sure of the extent of Hydra’s fall. 

Clint and Tasha had arrived faster than he’d thought they’d be able, in a small jet similar to the one they’d flown into New York during the Chitauri invasion. Tasha had sauntered out of it like it was her car back in DC and Clint had hopped out wearing what looked like a pair of sweatpants held up by safety pins. 

“What. I didn’t have time to change.”

Nat had clocked him over the back of the head and he’d disappeared back into the jet, coming out a little later wearing an ensemble that was heavier on the purple than his normal suit and significantly lacking the shield insignia on its shoulder. 

“Maria says the funding is starting to come through,” Tasha said. “Stark brought presents for everyone.”

Among the presents: A new suit for Jac, some wings for Sam that looked very much like they were modelled after repulsor tech, and a new uniform for Steve. He held the fabric in his hands for a few seconds before discarding it and picking up his shield. “Rumlow doesn’t want me to be Captain America,” he said softly. “And Bucky doesn’t need it either.”

“Rumlow wants to put you in a box and take you to Hydra for experimentation, Steve,” Jac said. Her new suit was yellow — she’d always had a weakness for the colour, and had echoes of her old Invaders uniform. Stark had obviously done his history homework on that.

“I’m not going there to fight. That’s your job, Jac. Yours and Clint and Tasha’s and Jim’s.”

Sam put the wings reluctantly back in the slot for them on the jet. “They’re real pretty. Remind me to thank Stark if we survive this.”

“You could say thanks now if you wanted,” the voice seemed to come from nowhere and Clint and Tasha rolled their eyes. 

“He’s patched into our communicators,” Clint said. “Feeling left out since he destroyed all his suits, I think.”

“I am lonely for your witty repartee, Barton,” Stark said. “In any case Mr Wilson, you should put those on, since you’re the only flier the team has right now.”

“I can’t,” Sam said. 

“Why not?”

“Rumlow wants both of us, Tony,” Steve said heavily. “Payback for the Triskelion I’m guessing.”

“Man doesn’t like being told to shut the hell up,” Sam said. 

“It’s all right, Tony,” Steve said. “Jim can fly any way.”

“Huh. He’s going to have to sit down and explain that to me when he gets back I find the whole process intriguing.”

“Sorry, Mr Stark, my days of being a laboratory animal were over before you were conceived. And in any case all my specs are in MI13’s files.”  Tony muttered something about having to go back over old data. Jim nodded at Steve. “Jackie and I are going to be speed and air support. Hawkeye and Black Widow are our snipers. Steve and Sam will be our bruisers. It’s all taken care of.”

“I’m beginning to feel unwanted and unneeded,” Tony said.

“You were always my favourite Avenger, Stark,” Clint said. Natasha casually stood on his foot.

“We’ll get it done, Tony,” Steve said.

Natasha touched his arm, pulled him a little way away from where the others were gearing up. “Word from Fury. There’s been another big Hydra fight — Coulson’s team brought down a traitor and the one they called the Clairvoyant, as well as the majority of the Centipede operation. My guess is Rumlow’s going to be lacking a lot of the support he thought he could count on. You can use that to your advantage.”

“Understood.”

She looked at him. “Trigger words are nasty stuff, Steve,” she said softly. “Rumlow could make the Soldier hurt himself. Hurt you. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“It’s not going to come to that Tasha.”

She hesitated. “Clint and I can take him out. It doesn’t have to be you who does it.”

Steve sucked in a breath. “Tasha — “

“You know if you ask me not to do it I won’t,” she said. 

She wouldn’t pull punches on this. She was giving him a way out, and he would be a fool not to take it.

“Please don’t do it,” he said. She nodded, once. Turned to leave, but Steve caught her arm and took a breath. “Only if I can’t. All right? I owe him that much.”

She reached up and cupped his cheek. “You would have done it on the helicarrier if you had to, Steve.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I couldn’t. I nearly sacrificed all of you for it, and I can’t afford to do that again.”

She patted him. “You won’t have to.” He watched her go, saw her pull a rifle out of the jet that was nearly as big as she was. High power. Long range.

Even with the serum coursing through his veins a rifle like that could kill Bucky with a single shot.

He swallowed. It was better not to think about it.

Steve put the binoculars back with the rest of the kit that he wouldn’t be taking up to the carpark. The shield he would take, if things went bad he might need it, and in the end he figured Rumlow would expect him to carry it with him.

It still felt odd, holding it, after letting it go in the helicarrier. As though giving it up had somehow lessened its power, which was a stupid thing to think about a hunk of metal. But.

There were reasons the Commandos had favourite guns, reasons why Dugan had never changed his hat, reasons Bucky’s favourite knife had gone everywhere with him even when the fighting was miles away.

“Sam?”

His presence next to Steve was like an anchor. He remembered waking up, after the Potomac — the first moment of pure panic that hit him _how many years has it been this time?_ soothed away by the sight of a known face. A friend. 

“Right here Cap.”

“It’s time.”


	36. Purification

The Winter soldier can see Rogers and the Falcon approaching. He remembers the feel of the Falcon’s wings in his metal arm, remembers kicking Rogers from the helicarrier and the panicked _Steve_ as he scrambled desperately to save him. It makes him sick to the stomach — an undefinable feeling, an unfamiliar emotion.

_Guilt._

Rumlow, confident that the Winter Soldier cannot move, walks out to meet them. 

Rogers ignores him. 

“Bucky are you all right?” he says. The name coming from those lips hurts like fire. If the Soldier had the will to gasp he would. Rumlow puts a hand on Rogers’ chest and pushes him back towards Wilson, stepping back towards the soldier and jerking his head. 

“Stand up, show your Captain you’re not hurt.”

The Winter Soldier stands. Rumlow, perhaps sensing that there is more danger here than there should be, steps behind him, shoving his pistol into the Soldier’s midsection.

Rogers studies him, eyes flicking over him in a way that makes the Winter Soldier uncomfortable. It is familiar, that look. Assessing, calculating.

He knows Rogers is meant to be a master strategist. That was in his programming, before he tried to finish his mission. He was supposed to be too fast for that. Supposed to kill him before he had time to work it out. 

His programmers had underestimated Rogers. Or perhaps they had underestimated that kernel of recovered memory in the Soldier’s mind.

“Let him go, Rumlow,” Rogers says. 

“No. That’s not how this goes, Cap.”

“Tell me how it goes, then,” Rogers says. “Tell me why I shouldn’t have Nat take you down where you stand.”

“I say one word, Cap, _one word_ and your precious Barnes goes on a killing spree,” Rumlow says. “Not to mention Hydra has you surrounded. You and your _Invaders.”_

Rogers’ eyebrow twitches. Wilson folds his arms over his chest. The Soldier knows they have comms — his enhanced hearing can hear chatter in them, although he cannot make out the words. “Rumlow you’re not holding all the cards. Hydra is in shambles. There’s no way out of this that doesn’t involve you in custody.”

Rumlow laughs. “Cap I have all the cards I need,” he shoves the pistol into the Soldier’s stomach. “You’re coming with me, you and your Falcon.”

Rogers puts his shield on the ground. The Winter Soldier’s eyes widen. “No,” Rogers says. “You can take me. But you’re letting Bucky and Sam go.”

Rumlow hesitates. The Soldier can hear his heart skip a beat. “You think?”

“Your Hydra back up is gone,” Rogers says. “My _Invaders_ took them out while I was walking here. Do you really think they could stand against them?” Rumlow shakes his head.

“You’re lying.”

“Check with them,” Rogers says. “Go on.”

Rumlow presses a finger to his comm. “Report,” he says. 

There is nothing but static in response. 

Rogers takes another step forward. Rumlow snarls and jerks the soldier backwards. “No,” he says. “You’re forgetting the trigger word.”

“If you order Bucky to kill again Hawkeye will take him down. And Natasha will kill you.”

“You’ll never get Barnes back unless I cancel the trigger, Cap,” Rumlow says. “That’s how it works. He’ll be catatonic for life, trapped in his own skull.” Rumlow shakes the Soldier, snarling. “Not that it’ll be much of a difference for him.”

The Winter Soldier sees Rogers’ fists clench at that, and when he speaks his voice is tight with anger.

“You’re not going to do that, Rumlow. You’re going to cancel the trigger word and walk out of here with me. I’ll go with you. Only me. But not unless you set Bucky free.”

“Hydra wants all three of you.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Steve,” Wilson is shaking his head, but Rogers holds up a hand. “No, Sam. You need to take Bucky out of here. Help him. He’ll need it.”

“Steve this isn’t what we agreed.”

“Rumlow can cancel the word, Sam.”

 _“Steve we can find another way.”_ Rogers looks at Wilson for a long moment and the Soldier can see that little slump of the shoulders that means he’ll do as he’s asked. Memories crowd the Soldier again, of how hard it is to say no to that face, that sense of what was _right._

“Set Bucky free,” Rogers says, turning back to Rumlow. “Cancel the trigger command. I’ll go with you.”

Rumlow laughs. “You’re a fool, Cap,” he says. “And I’m not. You really think I’m gonna hand him back to you? When I’ve got all three of you here? Back up will come. If you try to attack I’ll trigger him and he’ll die, or if he’s lucky he’ll kill you and every civilian within a ten mile radius.”

“Back up won’t come. And you know I’m better than you, Rumlow,” Rogers says. “I’m better than strike and you combined. And you’ve pushed me. If you hurt Bucky I’ll kill you, you know that. The only reason you’re still alive is because his life is in the balance. But you also know that if I give you my word I won’t break it. We worked together long enough for that to sink in.” 

Rumlow hesitates. The Soldier can feel the breath stuttering in his lungs. 

“Why do you think they sent you in here, Rumlow?” Rogers continues. 

“I _asked.”_

Rogers laughs, a low, sad sound. “Yeah, I’m sure you did. But they wouldn’t have sent you in if you weren’t expendable.”

“Hydra’s going to revitalise me, Captain Rogers,” Rumlow says. “They’ll give me what I need to be better than you ever were.”

“You mean the centipede serum?” Rogers says. The Soldier feels Rumlow wince. “We know about that. We know about Cybertech. We know about Deathlock. It’s not happening for you, Rumlow. Your only chance of walking out of here alive is if you have me with you. And the only way that’s happening is if you let Bucky go.”

Rumlow hisses. The Winter Soldier knows that he’s given up, knows that he is going to do what Rogers asks. And once Rumlow hands what Rogers thinks is his friend over to Wilson, he knows that Rogers will walk with him into Hydra.

Into mind wipes and torture and freezing and death.

They want Rogers more than they care about the Winter Soldier.

They always have.

“I can deactivate him,” Rumlow says.

“No,” Rogers says. “I want him free. Completely free. You get rid of the words…”

“I can’t do that,” Rumlow says. “All I can do is cancel the trigger word he has.”

“Do it.”

The Winter Soldier breathes deeply.

Rumlow whispers in his ear. “ _Очистка.”_

The trigger lifts. 

The Winter Soldier doesn’t hesitate. Grabs the hand that holds the gun to his gut.

Finds the trigger.

Fires.


	37. Safe

In the moments before Captain America and the Falcon confronted Rumlow on the hot tarmac of an empty car lot in the Malibu afternoon sun… 

Jacqueline Falsworth Crichton and Jim Hammond, the two founding members of the British WWII special projects team code named the Invaders, (SSR files marked TOP SECRET and classified, not even released when Black Widow breached SHIELD security during the recent Washington DC crisis) brought down two Hydra patrols on the outskirts of the walking track car lot. The two heroes worked in perfect tandem, yellow streaks of flame shooting behind them, speed and efficiency and silence not seen since 1977, and not seen publicly even then.

Clinton Francis Barton (code name Hawkeye) and Natasha Alianova Romanoff (code name Black Widow) used a variety of SHIELD technologies to jam the comm signatures of Brock Rumlow (formerly SHIELD, Strike Team Alpha) so he was unable to contact the back up he required to safely extract Captain America, The Winter Soldier and Falcon. Clinton Francis Barton unconfirmed to use a specially designed “jamming” arrow for this particular assignment. Black Widow refused to comment.

Maria Hill (formerly Deputy Director Hill, SHIELD, currently head of the Independent Avengers Initiative arm of Stark Industries) and Director Phil Coulson (currently officially deceased, happy to admit that his situation is complicated) used the remainder of SHIELD’s firepower to block Hydra air support to a small car lot outside Topanga.

When Captain America made his deal with Brock Rumlow (Hydra code named Crossbones, for the crosshatching of scars on his chest left by the harness he wore when he was trapped in the ruins of the Triskelion, although these files have yet to be uncovered by anyone outside of said shadowy organisation) there were no less than fifty ex-SHIELD and CIA agents stationed throughout Topanga and the surrounding parkland, ready to give back up should Captain America’s mission go wrong.

In the end, none of them were disappointed they were not needed. It had been a very busy month.

***

Pain was familiar in all its forms to the Winter Soldier. Gunshot wounds in particular were so common as to be almost routine. The impact, the sudden coldness, the spread of warmth and fire. He felt his support go down — was vaguely aware of the arrow that shot past him into his captor. The heat of the tarmac as his back hit it was almost enough to break through the spreading cold in his stomach.

Rogers was there. The panic in his voice was a palpable thing — worry for him — worry for _his friend._ “Oh God. Bucky… _talk_ to me.” His hands clutched at Bucky’s shirt, rucked it up, tried to find exactly the extent of the injury. “No, no no, you’re not going away. Not again.”

The Winter Soldier shook his head. His mouth worked, but it was difficult to form words. “I’m not worth it,” he breathed. “You don’t want this.”

Rogers either didn’t hear him or was ignoring him. “Sam deal with this. Call the team.”

“You got it, Steve.”

The Soldier felt his chest tighten and his throat constrict. No one should be this upset over him. It didn’t make sense. “Leave me.”

Rogers rested his hand on his forehead, giving him a small, sad smile. “Don’t be stupid you know I can’t.”

_“I don’t know you.”_

_I’m not who you want me to be I can never be him you’re only going to be disappointed like you always should have been you never knew you never got it and I can’t bear to do that to you again._

“Bucky you’re lying on the ground bleeding out because you didn’t want me to get taken by Hydra. If you don’t know me I think it’s time we were introduced.”

The Winter Soldier, for the first time in more than sixty years, laughed. Rogers smiled at him, but he could see tears in the blue eyes. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t laugh you jerk you’ll rupture something.”

“Bullet. Already did that,” the Soldier gasped out.

“Shut _up.”_ He did not like other people touching him, normally. It was strange to acknowledge that, as Rogers stripped his clothes from his torso. He was talking urgently into his comm, checking on Wilson, checking on the status of the medical team. Once he got a response he seemed satisfied with he focused back on the Soldier, a continual stream of talk spilling from his lips. 

“You’re gonna be okay, Buck,” he said. “This is nothing compared to what those Japanaese infantry did to you on Kokoda. Remember that? The mosquitos used to bite me and go nuts, Dugan used to swear we were giving them drugs and Dernier said if he learned to make a serum that cured malaria he’d sign up to be a pin cushion for Stark, let him inject him in every single vein…”

He was efficient. His hands were warm and large, and the Winter Soldier could not stop himself from arching into the touch. It was so strange, to be touched with obvious care. Rogers sought out the edges of the wound with deft fingers and the Soldier hissed. Rogers’ swore, apologising. The Soldier tried to say it was all right, tried to tell him not to be stupid, but words weren’t coming any longer.

There was a lot of pain. But in this moment, with Rogers leaning over him and doing everything he could to stop him from dying, he could ignore it. There was something. Something he was supposed to do. He hesitated, before he reached forward with the metal arm, feeling Rogers’ chest under the thin shirt he still wore. “Stop,” he whispered.

Rogers looked at him, but didn’t stop putting pressure on the wound. One hand, though, found the Soldier’s flesh hand, still resting on the ground. Warm fingers encircled his, a grip strong enough to crush, but gentle enough to feel like protection. “Gotta stop the bleeding Buck. The paramedics will be here soon. They can remove the bullet.”

The Winter Soldier’s vision was swimming. It had been days since he’d slept, more hours than he could conveniently count since he’d eaten. And despite the pain, right now, with Rogers hands on his body, with the sound of his heart steady in the Soldier’s ears, for the first time he could remember, he felt safe.

“It’s all right, Buck.” Steve said, one hand tangling in the Winter Soldier’s hair. “I’ve got you.”


	38. Aftermath

The jet made its way back to New York. Fury’s erstwhile surgeon was working on Bucky in the back, so Jac and Clint and Sam and Natasha were crowded in the cockpit to give them room. Jim had laughed and told them he’d make his own way there. “Planes are so cramped,” he’d said.

“He’s not gonna let the Doctors do their job,” Sam said to Jac. “Hovering like a goddamn mother hen.”

“Give him a break, Sam,” Jac said, smiling. “It’s been seventy years.”

“Less than that,” Natasha said. “For Steve any way. Or do you people who had to go the slow way forget that for Steve it’s only been three?”

Jac glanced back at Steve, who was at least on the opposite side of Fury’s surgeon so he could work without Steve getting in the way. She could see the dark tangle of Bucky’s hair, the metal of his arm catching the light of the small space, the curve of a cheek. Steve had his flesh hand on Bucky’s shoulder, he was talking in a low voice, even though Bucky had been unconscious when they got there and certainly wasn’t conscious while Poulos was hunting around in his sternum for a bullet.

Catching up, Jac thought to herself.

Trying to fill him in on what he’d missed.

She turned away, flushing, suddenly, feeling like she was intruding. “What’s the prognosis on Rumlow?” she asked.

“I just hit him with an electric arrow, he’ll be singed but he’ll live,” Clint said. “Would have knocked him out for a few hours. Hill wanted him pretty badly, my guess is whatever is left of SHIELD wants to know all the things he knows and that’s not gonna end well for Brock, I’m afraid.”

“I can’t find it in my heart to feel too bad for him,” Sam said.

“He always was an arrogant ass,” Natasha said.

“Must be strange for you two,” Jac said. “You worked with some of these men for years.” 

Clint’s jaw worked. “Just goes to show you can never know everything about a person,” he said.

“Where would the fun be in that?” Natasha said.

The jet landed in a fancy hanger at the top of Stark Tower that Jac didn’t even want to begin to think about how he got cleared. Paramedics met them and hustled Bucky off the jet, leaving Steve standing on the ramp looking like a lost kid. She came up next to him and put her hand on his arm.

“He’s going to be fine, Steve,” she said. He looked at her and gave a small smile. 

“I know,” he said. 

Sam came up on Steve’s other side and clapped him on the shoulder. “Look, I don’t want to make anyone mad or anything, but all my stuff’s in DC.”

Natasha and Clint walked past them, Clint smiling at Sam over his shoulder. “You can crash at mine till we get you a lift back. Hey you’re a smart guy, do you know how to program a VCR?”

Jim landed in a flash of flame just as the hanger doors started to close. “I’m ninety eight years old and even I think VCRs are out of date, Agent Barton.”

Clint spread his arms. “Hey, it’s my _stuff.”_

Sam followed the others towards the elevators, still laughing and talking. Steve took a deep breath and Jac squeezed his arm again. “Come on,” she said. “He’ll be waiting.”


	39. Recovery

He wakes in a bed.

This confuses him. He cannot remember how he got here.

“Hey,” the voice is familiar. He turns his head, on a neck that is aching, to see a face that’s familiar as well. He searches for a name to put to the face. It should be easy. He knows that face better than he’s ever known his own but he can’t find a name.

A hand squeezes his metal one. “I’m here, Bucky.” Why does he have a metal hand? “You gave me a scare back there. Damned fool thing to do, shoot yourself. Anyone else it would have worked.”

He remembers a gunshot. Remembers falling. Remembers cold purpose.

“The doctor’s said that wound would have been fatal to anyone who didn’t have serum like we do. I can’t believe you kept that from me the whole time. I mean, I know why. And you know why I never said anything even though I suspected. But I wish you’d told me. We could have… put in a plan or something, in case the others found out. Worked out a way to take advantage of it. Maybe we would have realised you’d survive the fall.”

He blinks. 

_Steve._

“The man who helped us in DC — he’s got a lot of experience with treating people who have trauma. When you feel up to it you can talk to him. I don’t know how much it will help but…”

“Steve.”

The deep, calm voice stuttered and stopped. He wasn’t sure if he’d spoken loudly enough, wasn’t even sure if it was the right name. It _felt_ right. It felt right in a way that he didn’t think he’d felt for years.

“Bucky?”

“You’re Steve,” he said again, with more confidence.

“Yeah,” there was hesitant wonder in that reply. “Yeah Bucky, it’s me. It’s Steve.”

“They told me you were dead,” he said. “I asked for you, but they said you’d gone into the water.”

“I did, Bucky. I was gone for a long time.”

He struggled to sit up. 

“Easy, Buck. You were shot. The doctors patched you up but you need to heal.”

“Feel fine,” he said. “Help me.”

Large hands wrapped around his torso, gently sitting him upright. They were in a bright room. Not a hospital. “Where are we?”

“Stark tower,” Steve said. “Avengers Tower, now, I guess.”

He looks at the man again. He knows it’s Steve. Knows it inside and out, like he’s never known anything else before. But that is all he _knows._

There are other facts. But none of them are certain.

“What year is it?” he asks.

That little line reappears between the man’s eyes. 

“2014,” he says.

That one is unexpected. “Shit,” he says. “You’re kidding, right?”

A little smile, there. “No, Bucky.”

“I can’t remember,” he says. Suddenly it’s too much. “I can’t remember any of it.” _But I can._ “What’s happening, Steve?”

“Shh.” Steve cards one hand through his hair. Too long. How long since it’s been cut? “The serum has been fixing the damage they did to your brain.” A muscle works in Steve’s jaw. “They wanted to keep you unconscious for as long as possible, but I told them no. You’ve slept long enough.”

_Being pushed onto the chair and wiped. Over and over. Because he was beginning to heal. Because he was beginning to remember. Because they needed him blank or he would rebel against them._

He shudders. “God,” he says. “God I can remember…” Steve doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are the saddest thing he’s ever seen. “You should have killed me Steve,” he says. 

“I’m sorry. You know I could never do that, Bucky.”

There is an enormous weight of years crowding in the back of his head, he can see glimpses of them, flashes of years upon years in cryo. Deaths. The things that he’s done. He knows if he starts to remember any of them he will remember them all.

“I don’t want to remember. The things I did. I killed so many people.” The metal arm clenches and unclenches, the whirring of its gears bringing more memories close. He doesn’t know how to chase them away. His breath starts to come in gasps.

Steve is shaking his head. “It’s not your fault. It was never your fault. I should have gone back for you. I should have known, I should have — “

He let out a desperate laugh. “God listen to you. If it’s not my fault it’s definitely not _yours,_ Jesus. I could have made them kill me. Fought harder. Said _no — “_

“Stop.” Steve reaches out again. Touches the non-metal arm, this time. The shock of flesh on flesh makes him look down. He _wants_ suddenly. And with the want comes fear that makes him shake. He’s not allowed to want. 

Is he?

He experiments. Curls his own fingers around the larger ones. Runs a thumb over the knuckles. Steve makes a small sound in the back of his throat and his fingers tighten.

He can’t remember the last time he has ever touched someone of his own free will.

“I’m gonna be right here,” Steve says, voice breathy. “It’ll be all right.”

His voice cracks. “You think?”

Steve’s smile is sad, but it’s a smile. “You remembered my name,” he said. “You remember who you are.”

“Natasha said I needed to get there on my own.”

Steve shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. “If you want me to go I will,” he says. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want. Never again, that’s a promise. If you need to get there by yourself — that’s fine.” He grips Steve’s hand a little tighter. He doesn’t know if he wants that. Doesn’t know anything, really. Steve puts his other hand over the first. “But the thing is…” Steve looks up at him and Bucky… _Bucky_ can remember the earnestness in that gaze, can remember being on the receiving end of it too many times to count, can remember a tiny, beautiful person trying to fight the entire world and not realising that he couldn’t do it by himself…  “you don’t have to.”

It’s not all right. But maybe it will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for Soldier/Ghost, folks. Thank you so much for reading, and for commenting, and for leaving Kudos and basically helping me get this done. I'm so sorry it was meant to be short and ended up being long and feelsy. If you're interested there will probably be more drabbles and a long fic with Modern!Jac (cameos from other characters as always) as she still has to deal with that pesky vampire who turned her son. Much love and thanks to all!


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